


A Variety of Ghostbur

by StarOverHeaven



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Canonical Mental Illness, Do not post to another site, Good Big Brother Wilbur Soot, Good Sibling Wilbur Soot, He is trying, Other, Sadbur, except i use it like a stick and beat you with it, i might be whumping him a little bit for my own amusement, i need to write dadza content i know ill get there, very little comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:07:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 21
Words: 26,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28006674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarOverHeaven/pseuds/StarOverHeaven
Summary: Ghostbur Bitlets that I wrote shortly after being introduced to the fandom. Ghostbur is perfect for the angst I crave, and recently the Dream SMP (and their lovely fandom (hi go check out the artists there's tons of them and they're all amazing)) have given me a lot of inspiration so I wanted to write for it!Chapters are individual unless stated otherwise.
Relationships: Wilbur Soot & Sadness
Comments: 66
Kudos: 182





	1. Just A Little More (Words:1260)

He didn’t like it when people tried to talk to him about _Serious Things_. 

All of the things people told him about Alivebur… So many were negative, so few of them good. There’s a hole in him where all of those memories used to be, shattered and broken at the edges where stitches pulled tight as memories crumbled, like something in his head was being blown apart so slowly that he had to struggle to hold onto it all. The blue solved the pain, dulled it all away until he didn’t have to think about anymore. 

Ghostbur tried his best to be positive, even when the words brushed raw edges and dug deep at the empty pieces inside of him. Tried to ignore the bleeding of his wound and the way his eyes drew tight at the edges, straining to hold back something that tried to leak free whenever he tried to think about the _before_. 

Something told him that if he wasn’t careful, he would break. That those raw edges would never heal, cracking open and bleeding into his happiness. That the evilness that the people tell him of will stain him, make him bleed black and blue and red into the rest of everyone until the gold fades and all he was made of was pain again. 

The pain. He remembers that most vividly. It’s hard to forget when every word reminded him of it, since he found the room. The _Serious Thing_. When he saw it some part of him trembled, his heart shivering in muscle spasms where it lay dead inside him, where the hole of his death wound felt like it was full of something so cold it was hot, not pain but something _empty_ that made him aware of it. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about the _before_ since then. As though it was _haunting him_ \- the irony was not lost upon him. 

The memory of dying was dull and tight, something full of pain and yet so much _happiness_ that it physically hurt to think about it. Even passing thoughts had his heart spasming, long-dead blood dripping and leaking from a wound he tried not to think about ever since he stitched his sweater closed messily over where it lay. 

He had been so happy to die. 

Ghostbur stared at the lanterns from the grassy hill, clutching at his sweater gently over the stitches, fingering at the messily done string and pulling them tight where they’d gotten loose, a habit he’d grown since.... 

He tried to remember. 

Coming back had been… hard. The pain of it, he remembered that most vividly. How his body that wasn’t there kept telling him things that didn’t matter anymore. How it told him that it was _wounded,_ that it could feel organs slipping and nerves broken by a blade, how the sword was cauterizing him inside where the blade ran hot as the enchantment licked it with flame. 

Yes, he remembered. He didn’t want to be _Wilbur,_ hated and feared and disliked by everyone, pitied and - and - and looked at as if he was _broken,_ as if they could _see_ how he hid it, even though he did it well. Hiding how the pain struck him when memories he tried to forget were talked about, when he was told things he didn’t want to hear. It wasn’t really the pain of it that he hated, though. 

It was the emotions. They were vivid, tinged with something he shrank away from, something that had rotten inside of Alivebur that still lingered inside him even now. He feared it. Feared what they might be, feared what might become of him if that emotion leaked into him, stained him blue inside until all he felt was -  
  
No. He wasn’t Wilbur. He couldn’t be. He ignored the way they all said the name when they saw him, ignored how the name drudged up memories he didn’t want to speak of, of his name said brokenly, how actions he cannot remember doing haunt their perspectives of him. 

Ghostbur stared down at the crater, feeling how a shiver shook down his spine as emotions shifted in his head as memories curled in like claws, some sort of strange satisfaction and a deep grief that went past physical. He knew it was under him. He could feel it, how his wound bled a little thicker here and his feet felt fuzzy, how his fingers twitched without his consent. 

The feeling of stone, shifting under his hand. His ears rung with a hiss that wasn’t there, that hadn’t been there in a long time - 

_Stop thinking about it._

Ghostbur turned away, ignoring the spike of pain in his head as he tugged away from the memory. _I don’t want to remember the bad things. I only want to remember the good things._

But those good things seemed so few, when he compared them to the bad ones.  
  
He clung tight to his memory of talking to Phil not so long ago. _I was a good dad,_ Ghostbur told himself firmly. It was one of few things that he could cling to, that he could be sure of. Phil wouldn’t lie to him. Surely nobody would lie to him.  
  
_What would be the point?_ Some part of Ghostbur wondered. _I’m already dead._  
  
_But has that stopped them from yelling at you -_ He shook himself, clutching some blue in his hand that he didn’t remember getting out of his inventory as he put his free hand to his head. _They don’t mean it, surely._

The platitude did nothing to soothe the doubt crawling along his spine, sinking into his bones. He knew he wasn’t liked, but he didn’t know how to _fix it._ He wasn’t even sure he could anymore.  
  
_“I’m getting adopted.”_

Ghostbur twisted the blue in his hand, staring at it intently. Sometimes it just wasn’t _enough._ There wasn’t enough blue to take his blue away. Maybe he would make the whole world blue before he finally found peace with the ache of the emptiness inside him. Maybe he would never find peace. 

Maybe he died just to live to suffer. That sweet relief as he felt his heart shiver in his chest, felt his warmth leak away as his blood dripped thick and burnt down the blade. The satisfaction that was brief, when he looked at the ruins. Then the guilt flooded in, overwhelming, the ache of it breaking him inside, the tears in his eyes as he pleaded for it all to just - 

Ghostbur stared out over the lanterns as the sun set, eyes blank as he stood unnaturally still, so still that his lack of life was stark against the grass where his feet didn’t quite touch, his paleness sharp and empty against the green and brown and gray of L’manberg. 

_Be wasted._

A smile curled at the edges of his lips, something shuddering and broken and familiar in a way that _hurt._

The saddest thing about being dead, Ghostbur decided, was that knowing all your memories were only the happy ones from your life really put how awful living was into perspective. His memories were broken fragments of life, pieces ripped from a tapestry of suffering to be stitched into a broken yellow quilt with blue and red thread. Sadness and pain, cut into manageable pieces to fit in the jagged corners where the happiness didn’t. 

He would forget this sadness soon, he knew. 

Just a little more blue.


	2. Get Better (Words:512)

Sometimes he has bad days, Ghostbur knows. Days where his memory is more full of holes than a crater, where his gaze is blank and he barely moves at all. He doesn’t remember if people visit on these days, doesn’t know if they try to talk to him or tell him stories. These are the days when his memory blanks, when his heart tries to beat and his lungs try to breathe. 

His good days… They’re few, but he tries to keep busy. If he doesn’t the Good Day will become a Bad Day, because if he gives himself too long without a purpose he tries to think about Serious Things and his head begins to hurt and his hands begin to fade. When he thinks about Serious Things he usually wakes somewhere later feeling exhausted, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t really need to sleep. Normally he wakes in fields or his sewer, where his blood has coated the cobblestone or sunk into the grass. 

He tries to make all of his days good ones. He stays busy, talks to people and focuses on doing things. Sometimes he spends his days thinking about the good memories, sitting in his library and thinking of bread and fish and warm drinks, savoring the memory of flavors and scents and touch in his head. 

Once, he spent a whole day thinking about the clouds. The sky and water, focusing on the feeling of water going through him when he put his hand in the puddles on the sewer floor. Floating through people’s houses, lighting their lanterns and putting coal in furnaces nobody remembered to refuel. 

Ghostbur liked to be useful. He planted flowers and played in puddles and followed butterflies, coaxing bees closer to L’manberg just to smile when he hears Tubbo squeal from a mile away when he sees them. He put lanterns in the sky and built a mill, walked around L’manberg and savored the feeling of the dull warmth of the sun shining above him, even though his shadow never showed. 

If he was busy it meant he could ignore the expressions on people’s faces when they thought he wasn’t looking. It meant he could avoid the pity and anger, the sadness and the ache of longing that they stared at him with. The guilt that pooled in the corners of his fathers eyes whenever he saw Ghostbur, even though his expression was usually that of happiness. 

Ghostbur wasn’t sure whether his father was lying about his happiness, whenever he saw that. But he saw the determination, knew that Phil was trying to be happy for him. Ghostbur appreciated that. 

He loved his family, even though he knew he reminded them of worse times. He liked Tommy even though being near him made Ghostbur’s head hurt, and Tommy yelled at him a lot. Ghostbur was sure that once everything was better… 

He was sure things would be better. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. 

It had to get better. 

He wasn’t sure what he’d do if it didn’t.


	3. Smile. (Words: 710)

There was a crater. It was the first thing he saw, filled with rubble of old buildings and spatters of blood from those wounded by whatever happened here, sparks burning tiny pieces of wood and firework paper burning away. The smell of ash and smoke and blood was there, but when he tried to fill his lungs all he felt was a strange spasming sensation. 

He looked down to see brown and red and gray, his hands half-there, like someone had lowered his opacity to show the world through his hands. He stared. 

There was pain but it was dull, and he could feel pieces of himself inside of him spasming, like they were trying to do things but were no longer able. Blood stained his yellow sweater, and he could feel it being squeezed out of him, sluggish like sludge. He put his hand over the hole, staring at the crater. 

Some part of him was crying, he knew. He could feel warmth dripping from his eyes, but when he wiped at it his hands were stained black and blue instead of with tears, and his skin felt freezing to his own fingers. The sensation of touch was… strange. He put his hands together and was surprised to find that they passed through one another. He stared blankly. 

“Wilbur?”  
  
He twitched. The name sounded so familiar, something empty and aching. _That’s right. That’s me. My name._ He turned, eyes blank, to find someone he recognized but didn’t. His head began to ache, and he turned away again, staring at the crater as he let his hands drop to his sides. A wind that didn’t exist blew at the tail of a trenchcoat he didn’t even remember wearing, and for a second he could imagine that it wasn’t brown but _blue._  
  
“ _Wilbur did this?_ ” The person asks again, this time not with shock but with brewing anger. Wilbur turned and looked at them, tried to remember their name, this person with red ears and angry eyes, but his mind felt foggy and slow. Still, it wouldn’t be polite to just ignore them.  
  
“I think so.” Wilbur said, more to the crater than to the person. His voice was raspy, and it hurt to talk. He could feel pain shivering up his back, like fire and flame and rubble. The pain grew stronger the longer he looked, but he couldn’t stop looking. Some part of him was… 

Relieved. 

What about this sight _relieved him?_ Something curled tight around the edges of his mind, pulling and pulling and _pulling -_

A hand passed through his chest. 

Wilbur stilled completely, his body’s faulty attempts at breathing ceasing as his dead heart stilled inside him once more. It was… 

_Warm._

He turned, staring into the sad eyes of the person who had passed through him. _Blue,_ was his first thought. Then, seconds later, recognition sparked. 

“Tommy?” 

There was no response, and Wilbur stumbled back, staring blankly. He didn’t understand. They walked away from him, from the crater, away from - 

Away from him. _They don’t see me,_ Wilbur realized blankly. _Neither of them do._ They looked… sad. Yet so, so angry. Wilbur stared out over the rubble once more, then began to walk. He didn’t need to pay attention to his footing because it didn’t matter - he floated over destruction, over smoking wood and crumbled stone stained in blood, over sparks of blue and red disappearing into the flames below him. 

He looked… peaceful. 

Wilbur stared down at his body, at the sword embedded in his body and the smile on his own face. There was relief there, in that smile. He felt it even now, some sort of ache inside his head that had been soothed. He didn’t want to remember, he realized. He didn’t want to know of the suffering he had lived, that he begged for death with a smile, and bled out alone in a hole covered in the scratches of a madman as he listened to the terror and screams and explosions as his hearing faded and his lungs stuttered in his chest. 

So he just… 

Forgot. 

He woke up alone, wearing a yellow sweater and a smile, his cheeks stained with tears that he didn’t remember crying. 


	4. What's Worth Forgetting? Everything. (Words:921)

The ticking wouldn’t stop. 

Ghostbur didn’t know what was ticking, but he wanted it to stop. When he wasn’t busy, he could _hear it,_ like there was a clock in the back of his head. Ghostbur liked to keep busy. Even small things, like lanterns - he had liked making those, each gently made with as much focus as he could muster, so his fingers didn’t pass through. 

He didn’t want to think about the ticking. It was a _Serious Thing,_ he knew. He didn’t know how he knew but he did. It had been there since… 

He struggled to recall. There had been another _Serious Thing,_ before the ticking started. A room he hadn’t known had been there, the rubble that blocked it blown away by a creeper - it haunted him. Ghostbur knew that the room was a Serious Thing, and he had spent most of the day trying to down it away in the blue. It didn’t work. 

The blue had never _not worked_ before. 

Ghostbur wanted the ticking to stop. 

He didn’t want to think about Serious Things. He didn’t want to hear about Serious Things. He didn’t want to be _haunted by the Serious Things._

But they wouldn’t leave him alone. They all told him about Serious Things, and his mind ached with every word, like they were scratching the tales and stories into the inside of his skull. Sometimes he wished he _could_ do that, just so that he didn’t have to deal with the tight lips and sadness in their eyes when they realized he had forgotten again. 

It wasn’t worth remembering Serious Things. They just made everyone unhappy, made their eyes tense at the corners and their tongue sharp. Ghostbur liked to make people happy, but it was hard. There was so much sadness everywhere, and he didn’t know how to fix it. It made him sad. But then he forgot why he was sad, and lived it all over again. 

In reality it was sort of a monster, his head. He would remember, briefly, all the times he had forgotten before. See expressions on their faces and remember the dozens of times before when they had looked at him the same way, and he would know that he had asked before. Knew he had forgotten. 

Every day, it was like he was writing a book. When he looked away, pages were ripped away, and he had to put them back in over and over and _over again,_ hoping that this time they’d stay, that the ink would sink into the paper, would stain his fingertips. 

It didn’t. It never did. 

He missed it, sometimes. Being alive, that is. But he didn’t know if he wanted to live, when he knew that all these looks would become hostile instead of pitying, knew that they wouldn’t remember him as he was _now_ but instead would remember him as he was _then._

That was the most hurtful thing, really. Knowing that while sometimes they thought of him as separate from Alivebur, from _Wilbur,_ they never really _forgot._ He had heard so much about Wilbur - about Alivebur - and so few things were good. He didn’t want to be a tyrant, to be a destroyer, a madman who shook apart. He didn’t want to be alive, if it meant being _him._ If it meant going back to the ache of living, the pain of it all as his mind crumbled between his fingers, his morals lost in that strange rotting emptiness. 

“What is living if living is suffering?” Ghostbur wonders to himself in the coldness of his sewer, the words loud and echoing as they broke the silence that had been there. The water dripping seemed quieter, the empty brewing stands still and silent. 

He tried not to think about it, but he couldn't stop thinking. His head felt like it had been cracked open, and all of him was dripping out. He felt like an empty glass, cracked in half and overpoured until all of what he was was leaking from him when he tipped his head, or tried to pour more inside. 

He didn’t even realize he was crying until he lifted his hand to his cheek, feeling the warmth there. The tears stained his fingertips like ink. 

Ghostbur smiled. He liked books. 

He got out his journal, thoughts long forgotten as he stared down at the words on the page, tracing them slowly. He smiled, reading them all. It reminded him of things - whether those are the actual memories or him remembering a time he originally remembered them, he was not sure. 

He traced the crossed out words for a long moment. _A large explosion._ Ghostbur tried to remember, but the memory gave him mostly pain. Some sort of… relief. Of belonging. Of exhaustion. The same feeling he got when he remembered sleeping, but also pain - guilt and ash and the feeling of stone against his fingertips. 

Ghostbur closed the book and stared at the stone walls of his home, eyes going vacant as he thought. Then he came back to himself later, a few minutes after he had curled up, hands over his head falling as he heard footsteps as someone ran over his house, probably on their way to grab something. 

_I wonder what I was doing?_ Ghostbur thought for a moment. _Probably nothing important._

He filled some glass bottles with water and placed them into his brewing stands, the incident already gone from his mind. He smiled. 


	5. The Joy of Ending (Words:575)

“My L’manberg.” Ghostbur whispered. He didn’t like to visit when people were near, since he had remembered this place. It would worry them to see him sink through this wall, to touch his fingers to the grooves of words in the wall. It would concern them to hear him whisper the anthem he knew like it was engraved inside his dead, spasming heart. 

They didn’t like him. Ghostbur knew this. He knew it had something to do with Alivebur, but it was so hard to remember the _why,_ even though people told him he had asked them before why they were so upset with him. They… He liked to think he was _better,_ now, that they liked him, but - 

“My L’manberg…” The words felt important, his focus caught in the song. It felt familiar. Why? Why did he remember something like this? Why had he - ? The words ached on his tongue, and his eyes felt strained like he was trying to cry but couldn’t. Something important… They meant something. 

He traced the carved words in the wall again, even as his head began to ache. He didn’t notice his warm yellow sweater beginning to stain red, didn’t notice the spectral tail and collar of a familiar trench coat trying to appear - didn’t notice anything, really, other than the ticking in his head, some sort of strange anxiety beginning to boil inside him, some sort of memory of _need -_

Ghostbur pulled away from the wall sharply, the spiking pain in his head making him wince and his figure pale and flicker. He shivered, though it was less at the cold and more at the spasm of his dead heart trying to beat and his lungs trying to inflate inside his chest, igniting the phantom pain of flame and blade inside his death wound, cauterized pieces of flesh inside him spasming from the remembered pain. 

He turned, floating through the wall again to go back to his house. The warmth of the fire didn’t reach him, every part of him feeling like it had been hooked and pulled until his seams were bare of thread and all of him was leaking - and he was leaking, old blood disappearing before it even really reached the ground as he settled into a corner on the floor. It began to pool under him without his attention, dripping between the cobblestones and lining the bricks mortar in red. 

_It doesn’t hurt._

Ghostbur pressed his hand against his sweater, touching the wound. The relief that filled him was almost painful, to feel it there and bleeding. _It doesn’t hurt at all!_

He smiled through the tears, eyes closed as he tried to remember just to _exist._ He couldn’t feel the pain, when he was gone. He could ignore the memories of unraveling, knowing something was wrong with himself but _needing_ in a way he never had before, anxiety for _something_ and a strange determination mixed with tired resolve. 

_It is better to be dead,_ Ghostbur thinks as he sits in the quiet of the sewers, listening to the drips of water and the bubbling of the potion stands as his long-dead blood flooded the stones beneath him and his broken heart tried to beat sluggishly in his chest. 

He sits alone, bleeding and dying over and over, trapped in his last memories, for a long long time. 

Today was one of the good days. 

Wilbur smiled. 


	6. Sequels to Smile For (Words:512)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a brief bit of canon in it, specifically the spot where Tubbo interrupts Ghostbur's thoughts when he stands still for a second. This happened on a stream not too long ago. Whether this was what he was thinking about, or something else, is debatable.

He remembered more than he let on. 

Even if they were only pieces, shards of things he didn’t want to know or remember - they remained. The ticking madness, the paranoia - he remembers. The doubts when he looks at them all, this feeling that they’re all _lying,_ that they think him the same as Alivebur. Were they wrong, when he could feel his living memories creeping in? 

What did they expect, when they all kept telling him only the bad things? That he would get better? That somehow it helped him? He didn’t like being told Serious Things, didn’t like how the words reminded him of times far worse than the _now_ and the _here,_ didn’t like knowing the smell of burnt flesh and the visions of rubble and crumbling buildings and - 

He hated it all, the pain of the memories creeping in and the feeling that felt like it grabbed him by the spine on both ends and _pulled._

He tried to be happy. Tried to ignore the memories, the trauma creeping into the cracks in his head just like it all had before. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew that they all liked him better when he acted happy, when he acted like he was okay. When he acted like he was stupid. 

Ghostbur pressed his fingers harshly against the blue in his hand, staring intently downwards as his mind devolved into thought. The lava lit him from below, shining against the blue like red as it reflected in empty eyes. He remembered Tubbo’s words vividly, the words that compared Tommy to _him,_ to what he had been, to what had been _before._

A smile curled his lips despite himself, and Ghostbur lifted his head. He didn’t know why he was smiling. He just knew that some part of him was so unbelievably _sad,_ something empty that ached where his dead heart lay in his chest. 

_“- You can’t be the next Wilbur.”_

His smile grew, something sharper. His head hurt. It _hurt. Why? Why did it hurt?_

He didn’t know. He remembered… Ghostbur remembered…  
  
_Alivebur remembered -_

Ghostbur shivered. It felt like the thought had crawled up his spine, was burrowing into the base of his skull, grinding at the bone like a wolf’s teeth, making grooves in his careful mental shelter that kept all the bad away, the walls that lay crumbling and cracking - 

_His own son, destroying the walls Wilbur had built to keep him safe, burning all his effort to the ground -_

“Hey Wilbur?” 

He fell back to himself, lifting his head. Tubbo was looking at him with concern. 

“You’ve gone awfully still -” Tubbo continued, hesitant. 

“Sorry I’m back, I’m back, sorry -” 

“It’s okay it’s okay - “ 

“I had to think for a second.” Ghostbur said, trying to smile as he continued leading Tubbo back through the nether, trying to ignore how his lungs seized in his chest and his dead heart tried to beat brokenly inside him, as though it had forgotten he was dead. 

His head hurt.


	7. Memory (Words:1746)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ghostbur remembers. He just tries not to.  
> But it's hard when people keep bringing it up, and the cycle continues.

Ghostbur tried not to think about upsetting things, but he often had to anyway. Whether it was a face that reminded him or an object, even something as simple as buttons on the walls reminded him of dark things. Often, it would take him longer than he’d like to forget. 

Sometimes it took seconds. 

He couldn’t count how many times he had forgotten things mid-conversation with someone - probably because he could only remember it when other people told him it had happened, to be fair. The more he separated himself from who he had been, the less he worried. The less he remembered. 

He liked it that way. 

He didn’t want to be haunted by his own memories. Didn’t want to remember the way his father had looked at him, didn’t want to remember how Philza had left the place he had laid dying just trying to _save everyone._

_Techno survived. Tommy survived._

It was a relief, in a way, to know his family lived. Fundy would never fight in another war that his own father had caused. Techno could retire, where the violence would not find his heart again. Tommy would be safe with Tubbo, regardless of what happened. Philza would move on without him. 

_They would be okay._

But he didn’t expect to be left there, leaning against the wall as his hand tried to stifle the blood pouring from his chest, didn’t expect the sword’s fire enchantment to hurt _so fucking much._

Didn’t expect to see Tommy’s wide eyes from across a battlefield. 

_Tommy saw it,_ Wilbur knew. _Tommy saw me die. Saw me dying._

Wilbur wondered if he thought about it. Wondered if Techno had seen, if it had even mattered in the end. He heard, later, when his heart had long stopped beating, that Tubbo had died then, too. Maybe that was when the cracks Tommy had gained in the wars really got deeper, before Tubbo had put a peg into them and _hit -_

When Tommy was exiled, ~~Wilbur~~ Ghostbur swore he could hear his heart crack. Now, Ghostbur thinks about words spat at one another in a dark cave. Memories tinged with a strange, not-happy happiness that ached through his memories. Now, he knew the name for that feeling was _madness._

_~~He had thought about Techno and wondered if it ran in the family.~~_

He had gone with Tommy because Tommy was his brother, and his roots in L’manberg were already shaken. Fundy didn’t need him anymore, and he knew, trusted, that Phil could take care of both himself and his grandson without his help. 

Techno would be fine, and Ghostbur didn’t even know where Techno _was_ at the time, so he wasn’t an option. But Tommy? 

Tommy needed him. 

But then he didn’t. 

Ghostbur stared over L’manberg, trying to ignore how he felt the doubt creeping in. He didn’t want to be what he had been. 

Wilbur had gone mad, in the end. They all told him. He knew it. Believed it. But they didn’t know _why._ Had never even thought about it. Maybe it was just easier to pretend that he had always been bad, so the grief when he died had not been so hard to take. So that they could move past the memory of their once-friend who had gone mad while they all didn’t see a thing. 

But Tommy remembered. Tommy had known. Knew. 

Ghostbur stared at his hand, flexing it slowly. The fingerless gloves fit like they belonged there, but doubt was seeping into his head. He tried to ignore it, but it was hard to ignore. The way that the dark thoughts crept in when he was alone, and his sweater became a coat instead. When the wound in his chest began to bleed again, broken heart trying to beat desperately in his chest, over and over and over again until it started to _ache._

He remembered being alive. 

He shut his eyes tight against the falling sun, ignored the choking feeling as he pulled the memories away. He needed them gone. Needed to shut them away. He wasn’t Wilbur. Couldn’t be Wilbur. 

_I don’t want to be hated,_ Ghostbur thinks through the tears beginning to streak his face. 

_I don’t want to be…_

But he knew that it didn’t really matter, did it? Tommy hated him. He wouldn’t say it, but Ghostbur knew that he only reminded Tommy of his brother. His mad older brother, the one who had done this to them all. A friend who had been tainted by power, they thought. 

Ghostbur knew the truth, though. 

His madness wasn’t for himself. It wasn’t really greed, either. It was something deeper, something that had rooted inside him a long, long time ago. A strange paranoia that had been soothed by close friends, by family and hope and joy. He had been happy once, Ghostbur knew. Wilbur had been happy. Even in the last few days, Wilbur had been happy. 

_“Wilby.”_ Ghostbur whispered into the night, a smile pulling on his lips as he remembered how embarrassed his brother had been. Tommy had been so mad he had pinked at the cheeks, he recalled with a tiny smile. 

_I was happy._

Then he wasn’t. An election he remembered needing desperately to win came to mind. The joy of winning it. Then the fear, the anxiety. He had been okay with it, at first. Then the exile. 

Ghostbur’s lips twisted, fingers spasming in a shake that travelled all the way up to his shoulder. Fear. Anger. Anxiety. But he had been sure it would be okay, in the end. He had felt guilty that Tommy had been exiled too, a determination to take care of him. Then the pain from the arrow, the guilt and shame of having to lean on his too-young brother as they fled. 

Then seeing Fundy tearing down the walls. 

The burning flag. 

Even the memories hurt, like needles stabbed into his spine. Exhaustion, a strange mania already developing in the back of his skull. All the tiny cracks in him from being president for his first term began to deepen, exposing his fragile core. The doubt seeped in, his wound haunting his every step with a limp even though the arrow had long been removed. 

_My last life_. It had weighed heavily on him, too. He was so close to True Death, he swore he could feel it knocking. His trust in people withered away, the mania growing with every thought. Trusting hurt. He had been betrayed so many times, each face reminding him of the emptiness of his heart. 

_Only family,_ Ghostbur remembered. He had trusted Techno, for a while. Trusted Tommy. Tubbo. But then the doubt crept in. Techno had no real loyalty to L’manberg, even though Wilbur had known. Techno was in it to help his brothers. The rest didn’t matter. Tommy was in it for Tubbo, really, and Wilbur had become more and more distant the longer it became clear that Tommy trusted everyone else completely. 

The irony was not lost on Wilbur that he trusted no one, yet he was the traitor all along. The idea hurt. He hadn’t been a traitor, really. He’d just been… 

He tried to remember. 

Then the revolution hadn’t really helped. The stress came back, weighing on his shoulders. He began to crack, his support that had once been iron now becoming fragile wood and glass. Once he had handled the weight better, even though it strained him. Knowing his family would be safe regardless had fuelled him. 

But then the doubt came, and it was all lost to paranoia. He was bringing his family into war again. His brothers and him against the world, his loved ones on his side - yet it wasn’t enough. The betrayals rang heavy. Eret’s first one, then Fundy helping to tear down all the work he’d done. All the work he’d spilt blood for, had died for, had fought for. Gone. 

Then Manberg was built in the ruins of his home. His city. 

He would fight to make it right again. Fight one last time, so his family would never need to fight again. Fight until there was nothing left of him so that he could never lead them into war again. 

He went into that final battle armorless, with nothing but his weapons and twitchy fingers and the thoughts of over eleven and a half stacks of “plan b” buried beneath his footsteps. 

_The mad general._

Ghostbur smiled into the night, aware of the thin line between his awareness of himself and that of Wilbur. He had separated them, once. He couldn’t remember why. He hadn’t wanted to be a tyrant, after all. Even when the madness crept in he didn’t want to rule L’manberg in blood. In the end, he’d remembered. Had turned his sword upon himself and _begged._

He would not rule again. It would go against all of it. The whole reason he had built this place. Manberg ruined his L’manberg. 

_Freedom from tyranny._

Ghostbur remembered horns and anger, and his fingers twitched. Exile. Tyranny. For what? For running against the new president as an opposing party? If he hadn’t been thrown out he would have done nothing. If Tommy hadn’t been exiled with him, he wouldn’t have… 

No. He would have. It was against everything that L’manberg had stood for. A place of safety, of freedom, ruined. He had to gain it back, to _fix it,_ and then had gotten lost somehow on the way. 

And now… 

Ghostbur’s lips pulled into a tight line. He was vaguely aware of the puddle growing below him, ghostly blood seeping into the earth. The lanterns glowed above him. Everyone slept, unaware of the turmoil inside him. 

_Tubbo did it, too._

Tommy said that Ghostbur - that Alivebur - had made Tubbo president. Wilbur had thought… Tubbo would keep Tommy safe. They were close. Brothers, almost. 

But Tubbo didn’t keep Tommy safe. 

He did the opposite. 

Ghostbur’s fingers twitched, and he silently floated through the grass on the hill by his house, dropping through the floor like it wasn’t even there. Below him lay a familiar room, the signs rotting and the stone carved with familiar words in the walls cool to his touch. 

There was no button here, now, but he swore he could feel it against his fingers. His head hurt. 

He was… 

_Tired._

Ghostbur closed his eyes. _The tyrant king is dead._

He slept. 


	8. I'm not gonna told you I told you so... (something worth remembering for) (Words:2235)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exploring an idea where Ghostbur remembers (some of it)  
> (it's worth helping his little brother, after all)

“I was right wasn’t I?” 

Tommy flinched at the sound of his voice, but Ghostbur wasn’t phased. He watched the shorter man - _his little brother -_ as he dug at the side of the cave. He knew he was probably just making it colder, but he couldn’t be bothered by the idea at this point. Ever since his memories started getting clearer he hadn’t mentioned it but - 

But it wasn’t helping, was it? It didn’t matter that he hadn’t remembered. That he had been kind, and helpful, and only positive. They all yelled at him, in some way. Niki… He didn’t even know if she knew he _existed._ Tubbo only talked to him as though he had simply forgotten all of the pain, but that hurt, too, because it made it harder to keep _Ghostbur_ and _Alivebur_ separate. 

Quackity had yelled at him. Reminded him. The anthem, the crater filling slowly with water, the room, his lack of a grave, the lack of _mourning._ Techno had treated him just the same, but Ghostbur could see the pain there. Phil tried desperately to reconnect with him, but he could see the guilt in his father’s eyes. 

Fundy. His little champion. His little _betrayer._ Ghostbur had spent days in his sewer, unnoticed and unchecked on, the entirety of that headache. When his body, incorporeal as it was, had begun spasming in the pain of memories he hadn’t wanted. 

Nobody checked on him. He was ignored, treated like he was a leper. It wasn’t undeserved, admittedly. But Ghostbur hadn’t remembered any of it. Hadn’t deserved it. 

_I had thought it would be better if I didn’t remember. If they just had… the Wilbur they knew back._

Ghostbur smiled, and he knew that it wasn’t quite right anymore. It was hard to keep it all apart - the pain and sadness that ached, that had the trenchcoat he had died in forming over him, had his wound bleeding until he dripped with it. The happiness that overfilled until he went numb trying to keep it, his yellow sweater dulling and his smile emptier each time. 

_It is hard to be happy without the sadness in between._

He would remember eventually anyway, he had known. But he hadn’t expected it to be so fast. 

Hadn’t expected to hear _exile_ and remember the paranoia seeping in through the back of his neck, the memories of pain and arrows and madness. They had been so vivid that he had barely kept himself together as he followed Tommy across the sea, his cold formless self probably little comfort at all, now that he _knew._

Tommy wouldn’t look at him, but Ghostbur saw the tension of his shoulders. He sighed, focusing as best he could until he could put a hand on his little brother's shoulder. Tommy stilled, tensing further. 

Ghostbur moved closer, wrapping his arms around Tommy carefully. He didn’t want to pass through, make his cold seep deep into Tommy’s organs - he just wanted… 

To comfort. 

Tommy’s eyes closed, and Ghostbur pretended he didn’t see the tears forming. “I’m sorry.” Ghostbur whispered into a warm shoulder, “I didn’t…” 

His lips twisted. When he had been alive, electing Tubbo had made sense. He would keep Tommy safe and sane, when Wilbur was gone. He had known even then that he wouldn’t be able to live with the danger beneath his feet. Couldn’t ignore the siren call that screamed inside his head. 

Couldn’t live with himself, knowing he’d brought his family to war again. He had known he was slipping, but he couldn’t leave L'manbergs' memory to be soiled by Manberg. He had killed Manberg, but in the process L’manberg had died, too. He had hoped… 

They would keep on without him. 

And they did. 

There would be no more war. Wilbur was no longer, and so the pain would end, and New L’manberg could rise from the crater he’d made of his home and hope. His shelter for his family, torn apart by his own son and resurrected by his little brothers. 

But then of course the cycle began again. 

“He doesn’t get it, does he?” Wilbur whispered into Tommy’s shoulder, the torch on the wall sputtering. “He doesn’t know. And neither do you.” 

Tommy tensed. “What do you mean Wilbur?” 

Wilbur smiled, withdrawing before his cold could seep away into Tommy’s skin. This didn’t seem to reassure his brother at all, of course. 

“Why I made Tubbo president, of course.” He said conversationally, hovering his hand over the torch’s flame to watch it pass through his fingers. He wondered if his lighter still remained in the rubble of L’manberg. 

“I thought you didn’t remember?” Toms said, mining forgotten. He always had been easily distracted by conversation, his little brother. 

“I didn’t.” He replied, beginning to backtrack up the mine towards the surface. His little brother hesitated only briefly before he followed, his eagerness to know outweighing his need for iron. Wilbur didn’t know why he kept making armor when he knew Dream would just destroy it all on his next visit. 

_Wilbur wanted to grab Dream by the neck and **crush until** -_

“Alivebur knew.” He said instead of admitting to his desire to hurt the one who hurt his brother. “So I know. But that doesn’t mean I remember everything.” 

“So you did know.” Tommy said, his anger obviously brewing. _So impatient, Toms._

“I didn’t. But then I did. You asked me to think, so I did. The others helped, too, you know.” Ghostbur replied, floating above the grass so he didn’t have to deal with the strange feeling of something living passing through his body. 

“So they helped you but not me?” 

“No. They did the opposite of help. It helped anyway, though.” He replied, smiling. Confusing Tommy was fun. “They kept talking, you know? About all those things I apparently did. It gets harder and harder to not remember when people keep telling you over and over, you know. It kind of ruins the point of forgetting on purpose.” 

Ghostbur let himself fade more into _Wilbur,_ into the trenchcoat and blood and tears and madness. Tommy stumbled away from him, but Wilbur pretended not to notice, floating forgotten in favor of the solidity of walking instead. His trenchcoat was still torn on the edges, stained gray at the bottom with ash. His wound began to bleed sluggishly as his dead heart tried to beat, and blood dripped from the corner of his lips. 

“The whole point of it was that I didn’t remember what I was, Tommy.” Wilbur said into the frightened silence. “I didn’t want to be worse, you see? Because nothing living can hurt me, Tommy. Pain doesn’t exist for a ghost except if we do it to ourselves. But I wanted everyone to be happy. I knew that they would be happier without… what I was.” 

“Wilbur - “ Tommy choked. 

Wilbur smiled at him, scolding him with a finger. Tommy shut up instantly, frozen between fear at seeing Wilbur as he was - _as a madman -_ and seeing him as he was now, just a ghost of his brother who had been tired of being alive. 

“It’s okay.” He said into the quiet, putting his hands into his pockets as he stared at his little brother. At the wounds and scrapes and sadness, the tired eyes and the fear and shame and guilt all coiled into a ball. 

It made him want to _kill._ It must have shown in his eyes, because Tommy flinched. Guilt crept in, thick and sticky, and he wrapped Tommy up in his arms desperately because _what if he left like all the others he -_

That wasn’t him anymore. 

“It’s okay.” He repeated, quieter this time. Tommy relaxed from where he’d frozen, gripping tight onto a half-there shirt as tears formed in his eyes and he choked a sob into his older brother. “You know I’ll take care of you, Toms. That was the whole point of it all, you know? A safe place for you and Fundy and - and _Tubbo._ ” 

He couldn’t keep the growl out of his voice, when he said his name. The flinch he got in response had him squeezing Tommy briefly before letting go, but he wasn’t surprised when Tommy kept holding on, seeking comfort. He brushed through the tangled blonde hair gently, until Tommy lifted his head to look at him. 

He pulled it from his eyes to behind his ears, then squished Tommy’s face against his chest. Tommy squawked, struggling to get free as Wilbur laughed, smiling. It was… familiar. His little brother had a smile on his face when Wilbur let him go, dimmed only by the brief remembrance that Wilbur was _dead,_ but that was okay. 

Wilbur smiled at him, trying to ignore the blue dripping from his nose. It… hurt to be solid for so long. But it was worth it. Tommy’s face fell in concern but he shook his head, waving him off as he wiped the blue from his nose with his fingers. 

Being perpetually half-solid was okay, even though it made him ache. Being fully solid, though, was not as easy. 

“I’m fine. I just…” Wilbur’s lips twisted. “Tommy, the whole point of me putting Tubbo on the podium was because I had thought he’d take care of you.” He said, voice dark. 

“But he didn’t. He didn’t, Wil.” Tommy whispered. 

“I know. Trust me, I know.” It made him angry to even think about Tubbo, and he was aware of the fact that it showed on his face. The betrayal was unforgivable, especially since it was Tommy that Tubbo had betrayed in the end. “I won’t forgive him for that.” 

Tommy hesitated. 

“But you miss him.” Wilbur sighed. “I know.” 

His little brother was so soft. Forgiving. Too forgiving. 

“But he doesn’t visit you, does he?” Wilbur asked finally. Tommy turned away quickly, and Wilbur shot forward to put his hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t - I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean…” 

“You did mean it like that.” Tommy said, not quite angry but not calm either. Upset. 

“Well. Sort of. I just… Tommy you’re _miserable_ out here. I… I don’t like to see you upset.” 

“Then why. Why the wars?” Tommy snarled, and Wilbur flinched back, looking away. 

“I wanted a safe place. For you and Fundy and Niki and… And Techno and Phil and Tubbo and the rest.” He whispered. “A place where Dream couldn’t control you. Where you could be at peace.” 

Wilbur laughed, but it was broken. 

“It didn’t end well, did it? It was… It was okay for so long. Then the election. I… I didn’t know they had planned that. I thought I had won, again. That we could start planning new things. Houses and plans for everyone to have a place, and a place for Niki to farm her wheat for her bakery, and a place for Fundy to play and be safe. But. It didn’t work out like that. I was okay with it, for a second. Then Schlatt _exiled me._ Us.” Wilbur snarled. 

“It would have been okay, if it was just me. It was never for me. It was all for you all, to make sure you were safe. But then he banished us both, and he changed the name, and he - he was a _tyrant,_ the whole reason we’d made L’manberg was forgotten! To escape tyranny, to escape it all! Gone! I…” 

“You went mad.” Tommy said into the quiet. Wilbur didn’t look at him, aware of the tears streaming down his face. 

“I got paranoid. When Tubbo sided with Schlatt in the beginning… I only trusted him afterwards because of you. And then Fundy burned the flag, and tore down the walls I had built to keep him _safe._ He disowned me, you knowthat?Then I didn’t trust anyone. My own son had betrayed me. I trusted you, because you were my brother. I trusted Techno because he was my brother.” 

Wilbur hesitated, staring down at his hands. “But I didn’t trust myself. I was scared of becoming what we had tried to escape. The whole point of L’manberg was that there would be no tyranny, but I was a hypocrite, wasn’t I? Schlatt was democratically elected, and we formed a revolution. Overthrew him, and elected Tubbo instead without any input from anyone else.” 

“I couldn’t stand myself. L’manberg was gone. Ruined by Schlatt, ruined by me. But maybe Tubbo could rebuild it better.” 

“Then you blew it all up.” 

“Then I blew it all up.” Wilbur agreed quietly. “So that everyone could start again. Then I asked Phil to stab me in the chest. Begged him to, because I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. With the madness.” 

He tried not to look at Tommy, wasn’t even sure he would be able to see him through the tears, but Tommy was crying too. 

He wished he didn’t remember.

But he did. So he would use it to help his little brother. Help his family. 

* * *

“Hey Tech,” Tommy said with a half-smile as he stared up into the wide eyes of his eldest brother. 

“Techy.” Wilbur snickered from behind the youngest, floating up behind Tommy with his hands on his youngest brother’s shoulders. 

Techno swore he could feel a headache blooming already. 


	9. Try not to remember (you don't need to know what you already know) (Words: 858)

Ghosts were undead, and the undead were monsters. There was a fine line between being a friendly poltergeist who wanted to help, and being something far worse. Ghosts were nearly impossible to get rid of, requiring vast amounts of effort that usually wasn’t worth the result. Trapping them often resulted in newly gained abilities to phase through walls, and the longer a ghost “lived” the stronger it got. 

Each had its own mess of things, though. Violent deaths often made violent ghosts, and it was very rare that this was untrue. Some ghosts were so faint that they faded on their own, and usually they had unfinished business that tied them to the living. Ghosts with anchors in mortal humans often faded away soon after those people’s deaths unless they were anchored to a new mortal, and many who were anchored to a place or object could be killed or vanished by destroying said place or object. 

This is what makes Ghostbur so confusing, in the end. At first it could be assumed that he was tied to L’manberg. After all, when he first manifested he spent much of his time working on rebuilding. This wasn’t really true, but it was true at the same time. Instead, he was not bound to the _place,_ but more so the _concept_ of L’manberg. 

Freedom from tyranny, from brutality. 

L’manberg was changed, was _wrong._ He could walk far from L’manberg, when he once couldn’t. At first just to visit Tommy for short periods of time. Then further, when Dream told him to walk in the wilderness and Ghostbur followed his dead heart to Techno. 

He followed Tommy. He followed Techno. He followed Phil. He no longer followed Fundy. 

He watched as L’manberg lessened, weakened. As cages were formed and people he thought he knew became something he didn’t recognize. 

Ghosts walked a fine line between being friendly and being not-so-friendly. Ghostbur knew this, in his unbeating heart. He watched with blank eyes as things happened, as his mind struggled to comprehend and forget and _remember -_

A sword in his chest, blood on smiling lips and tears in familiar eyes. Warm arms and a choked voice, warnings whispered from dying lungs to a grieving father. His fingers twitched, and he suppressed a spasm as he watched L’manberg. Blue dripped from his fingers like blood, dripped from his nose and his eyes and stained his sweater. 

**_Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wr-_**

Explosions and fireworks, cold stone against his back and a button compressed under his fingers. Blood and bone and wounds, feeling his breathing struggle and blood choke him and stain the stone beneath. 

Ghostbur twitched, felt blood on his hands and blinked down at them with empty eyes. 

A trench coat lay heavy on his shoulders, stained in ash at the edges and torn at the back. He clenched his fists and it disappeared, just an illusion in his head. His gaze was met by a familiar sweater and an ache in his head. 

He tried not to think about it, but it followed at his heels. 

_Ghosts who die violently have violent tendencies,_ the book had said. 

He thought about fireworks and wounds and explosions, of begging and tears and blood and whispered warnings and his own father staring at him with so much _pain -_

“Ghostbur?” 

The ghost of Wilbur Soot glanced up and blinked. “I just thought it blew up on it’s own like L’manberg did!” He said with a smile, and when he tried to meet Phil’s gaze he couldn’t because Phil looked so upset and he didn’t like seeing Phil upset. _I must have forgotten again._ He breaks eye contact by moving a bit so that his father couldn’t see him through the top of the ladder-hole instead. 

“We have a lot of shit to talk about, son.” Phil sighed, but it was in a fond, sad sort of way. 

He clasped his hands together in front of himself and floated slightly off the floor so that he felt a little less real and tried not to think about the screaming in his head and the blood on his fingers, both blue and red. 

_He tried not to think at all._

~~( _Fireworks and fear, blood and plans and days spent making more and more and more and more because he wanted it gone so that there could never be another war so that no one was hurt because of him again he wanted it to stop he wanted all of it to stop because it was supposed to be safe and no one was safe and it was just happening again, repeating because it was his fault he did this and techno couldn’t come and tommy was exiled and phil was trapped and it was all his fault because didn't tommy say he made tubbo president and look what was happening why why why why why why wh y wh y y? ??? ?? ?)_~~

Ghostbur smiled. 

“It’s still raining.” He said, and Phil hummed, a sort of soft laugh. _Why does my head hurt?_ Ghostbur wonders, and then forgets that he thought that at all. 


	10. Something beyond that pale empty void (oh, hello me) (Words: 1337)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's a bit different. (I've been experimenting with the gods aus. Personally, I'm quite fond of Wilbur being a god of Madness and Betrayal. After all, a spark of madness can be the spark of genius, too. So what if Canon Ghostbur reached a bit too far and found something else on the other side? Now that sounds fun.)

Ghostbur remembered… being somewhere. There was no Phil or Tommy or Techno. But there was, wasn't there? He remembered… 

Something small and gold and smooth. It had called him, wrapped around him like a spider curling its legs around its prey. Green gemstones burrowed into his unbeating heart, and something deep in the dark exhaled over him. 

Ghostbur _looked -_

And Wilbur screamed, not in fear but in his head. It wasn't an emotion, more like an instinct. He didn't care, because beyond that there was _recognition_. He reached for the empty _wrongness,_ touched and felt part of himself dislodge. Felt too many eyes looking at him with too many teeth with a familiarity born from knowing something as one knows their own heart. Some part of him whispered, knowing - 

_How can I not recognize myself?_ Wilbur Soot thinks as he looks into the thing known as Madness, as a horror beyond comprehension and his mortal shell reunite in the infinite void of _nothing_ and _gone,_ in a place where time doesn't exist and the barriers of realities dissolve in holes left by people like him who have put them there by defying the laws of everything. 

For a single eternity, the mortal Wilbur Soot meets what he was, is, and could be. And he _smiles._

_~~He doesn't feel empty anymore.~~_

Wilbur woke with blood in his eyes and a splitting migraine. He stared through foggy eyes at his hands, the bone and blood forming. Some part of him knew it should hurt, some part of him still quivering from a wound that had ended him. Another part of him looked at the flesh growing on once-forgotten bones like it was nothing, because it had experienced worse. 

It didn't matter, because in that moment he heard sharp intakes in breath. 

Wilbur looked up, vaguely aware of the flesh and bone and blood, of his soft yellow sweater and how his dead heart was spasming in his chest, trying to remember how to exist and push and beat. His lungs filled with air, wheezing awfully around the hole inside him as his body tried to exist. 

The totem flattered to the floor, blackened and twisted and _wrong,_ as though a wither had blessed it with its touch. _~~(In reality, it had been something much worse. There was a reason nothing came back from the void, after all.)~~_

Totems were not supposed to do that. All the legends spoke as though they split perfectly, or became useless trinkets. Vaguely, Wilbur remembered the flash of light from Techno's hand as he held one under an anvil, the glow and crack of the totem as Techno escaped. 

His eyes met pale faces. He smiled. "I think that was supposed to hurt." He said conversationally, his voice rasping and so quiet it was nearly a whisper. Blood dripped down his face, red and black and blue like a bruised wound. 

He wasn't aware of passing out, but he must have because he woke tucked into a bed. The sheets were warm and soft, and when he inhaled he smelled the familiar scent of his family on the cloth. He pressed his face into it, bunching it up against his nose and _breathing._

It hurt but it was worth it. He could smell _so much._ Even the familiar nostalgic scent of Phil's feather fluff clung to the sheets, the scent of woodfire smoke and sap. The familiar scent of Techno, tinted by iron and copper. 

Almost more remarkable than his newly refound sense of smell was that he could feel. Before everything had been distant, like his whole body had gone numb. He had learned to feel by using pressure as a guideline, learned the thin boundary between touching and phasing until he could do both at will. 

But now things had _texture._ He clung to the sheets, every part of his aching not-quite-right being singing in joy. They were _soft._

(Some part of his mind stumbled, confused. _Is this what having a body is like?_ Something wondered, reaching through a body that was both familiar and not alongside a mortal unmortal mind that felt so close to its own. 

It felt softness for the first time through fingertips that were and also were not its own, and looked through eyes that were infinite in shock as the world did not crumble from it's touch. _Soft,_ it echoed. It felt joy, a strange pleasant fullness that made it shiver. 

It trembled, because the things like itself were not meant to _feel._

After all, on another World in another Universe in another Existence, it had transcended into something far past godhood, some twisted semblance of existence that made anything it touched quiver like it was ripping holes into reality. 

To be fair, it usually was. It's sibling had preferred ripping holes in _people._ ) 

Wilbur tried to move but quickly found that he couldn't move his lower half, and that trying to move at all made his entire body quake in something like pain. Instead, he laid there for a while until he heard someone coming upstairs, focusing on feeling the sheets between his fingers and ignoring the strange crawling sensation on his skin. 

"Wilbur?" Phil asked, his voice quiet in the dark of the room. Wilbur made a noise, soft and short in his chest. A huff, but not quite. His lungs wheezed too much. 

"You doing okay?" 

"Can't move." Wilbur rasped. "Spine I think." 

Phil came closer almost immediately, carefully lifting the blanket. He almost immediately dropped it again, frozen for a brief moment. His voice was choked when he spoke. 

"Yeah, I think your spine's reforming." 

Wilbur's whole body shook, his chuckles fading into a wheezing. "Always told Tommy to grow a spine. My turn." He joked. 

The sound that came out of Phil was neither a laugh nor a sob. Wilbur faded away into a sort of half-asleep state, vividly aware of the mess of flesh and muscle and nerves that was slowly repairing his body. Phil went back downstairs, his already marginal appetite long gone from seeing his child's bare spine exposed to the air. 

Techno had cordoned off the totem, and had been staring at it like it would singlehandedly destroy the world if he didn't keep watching it. Considering the ever-increasing blue and black stain on the floor underneath it, Phil couldn't blame him. 

"He isn't much better." Phil said into the quiet. His rabbit stew had long since gone cold. He picked at it anyway, partially because Techno made a mean rabbit stew and partially because he knew he needed to eat. Still, he couldn't focus on the meal, his mind stuck on the son he'd killed and still couldn't help who laid upstairs. 

Even Tommy, who had slowly been coming back to himself, had become quiet. The youngest glanced between Phil and Techno, tense and worried. 

"Are totems supposed to do that?" Tommy asked into the silence. Phil stared into his stew. 

"No. Totems only prevent death. They don't revive the dead." Techno said. Phil's eyebrows furrowed. 

"I've never heard or read anything about one being used on a ghost. Maybe because the magic recognized him as half dead, or maybe half alive…?" 

Still, it was a stretch. The magic and rituals and sacrifice behind the Totems of Undying had long been lost, only scraps passed down through legend and stories remaining. 

Phil thought about his son, his dead son who he'd killed himself, laying upstairs in a bed. He remembered the blue in his child's blackened blood, the way Ghostbur had stared at the totem like it was calling to him. Remembered the blankness that had taken his son's face when he'd touched it, the way his whole form had spasmed while simultaneously not moving an inch. 

Phil stared at his stew and tried not to think about all the stories he had researched about reviving the dead, and how he had discarded all of them because of the side effects and the warnings. 

He tried. 


	11. Why fear the ones you love (except when you know they're covered in blood) (Words: 1335)

When Fundy asked Ghostbur about his blue, pointed out that when he handed it to them it was always already blue, asked him if he was _sad -_

Ghostbur side-eyed the stand, the cage that had held Techno, and tried not to shake. Tried not to think about anything at all, really, but he wasn’t successful. _Would they have done that to me, too, if Philza hadn’t killed Alivebur first? Would they have locked me in a cage and talked at me, let me stare up at something as it fell towards me, let me die as my skull was crus h e d in ? **?**_

**_~~They’re all just going to betray me again. Going to rip me apart and sink their teeth in and hurt me again and again until I can’t make the pain stop and all my work is gone and i had died for nothing everyone had died for nothing i had killed fo r t hem wa s it n ot e n ough h h?H?~~_**

“Not now that I have Friend!” Ghostbur said, and tried to believe it. Tried to make his hands shake less, tried to ignore the existential terror that had coiled in his chest like a sickness. Tried to ignore the fear that was growing, the anger and _betrayal -_

Ghostbur smiled, and for a second it felt real and genuine. Like he wasn’t hiding the pain inside him, the emptiness that made his brief joy and happiness feel so useless. 

But he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He knew what it was, but his head hurt so much. It hurt his heart, made it struggle to beat in his chest, made his wound bleed black and red and blue until he felt numb. He didn’t like to think about sad, serious things. It just made the emptiness more vivid, made the pain get worse. 

How could he have lived with this empty hole inside him? This screaming agony that nobody noticed? He knew it as he knew his own heart, knew that it was always there. Was this what living had been? Some strange apathy that made him numb, made his fingers shake and his eyes dull? Made it hard to think through the screaming, through the songs sung off-key in his head until he couldn’t even _think?_

_Is this why Alivebur died? Is this what happened to him? Did he try to escape this emptiness? I hope he did, but I wish I didn’t have to suffer this, too._

He sunk his fingers into Friend’s soft wool, focused on the blues instead of the red until the ache was gone. While it always made him feel empty, it was better than _that._ Better than that strange suffering that he was always aware of, even when he tried to forget. 

Ghostbur removed the cage and tried to ignore how his hands shook as he did, tried to ignore the part of him whispering _they would have done that to you too._

If he had lived he would have been _~~exiled and they would have hurt him and he would have been so alone so so so so so so so alone oh what would he have done taken the sword and felt the blood on his fingers and the sand and gunpowder in his hands and felt the burning impact on his back and the pain no stop it hurts stop thinking about it it didn't happen so **why am i thinking about it why does it hurt -**~~_

L’manberg felt much better without the cage. He sang for his country and tried to feel happy, but something wasn’t quite right, still. He felt happier without the cage. He didn’t like the cage. It brought back things he didn’t like. 

He liked Ranboo, though. The half-enderman was quite young, a fresh face that didn’t know Alivebur at all. He had even asked Ghostbur if it was okay to move into the house he’d asked Phil to make, even though most people didn’t ask Ghostbur if it was okay for them to do things! He liked Ranboo. He was kind and polite and familiar with struggling with bad memory and rain. 

Ranboo wore a crown, too, which Ghostbur also liked. It reminded him of Techno. 

Ghostbur liked Techno. He wondered why he had left so soon after coming back to L’manberg, as he sat inside away from the rain in Phil’s house. He wanted to go find his not-brother-but-brother with his father, so they could sit in Techno’s cozy house. Phil kept telling him he couldn’t leave his house, though, which Ghostbur didn’t really understand. 

Of course Phil could leave his house! It wasn’t hard, surely? But Phil said that Tubbo said he couldn’t leave, because it was breaking the law. Vaguely, Ghostbur remembered distantly the sound of Tubbo speaking through thick stone, a speech about freedom and a place everyone was allowed. 

_Have things changed? Has Tubbo changed?_

The idea brought out a strange darkness to Ghostbur’s mood, one that wasn’t sadness but one that he didn’t understand, either. His fingers got all twitchy and he tried to ignore it. _~~Pretended he didn’t see the blood on his hands.~~_

Maybe Phil just didn’t know where Techno’s house was. That made sense, sort of. _~~Ghostbur tried to remember how they’d gotten back to L’manberg from Techno’s house and thought of nothing, except a strange anxiety and fear that if Ghostbur went back he would be followed and surely that wouldn’t happen why would they follow him back Techno was safe and good they didn’t nee d t o hu rt hi m l ik e th a t -~~_

He wondered if Phil had seen Techno’s house yet, or met his horse. 

Carl was a good horse. He had armor on, and it was blue. Ghostbur liked that. He wondered if Techno would let him ride Carl sometime. Can he even ride a horse anymore? He hoped so. That would be fun. Ghostbur was not very good at floating if he was trying to go fast, but if he was still sometimes he could float easier. Maybe he should practice more. 

He floated above the floor slightly anyways, most of the time. Would he just float over a horse? He wasn’t sure. Maybe if he held on very gently, Carl could take him somewhere. Ohhh, or maybe he could float behind Techno by holding onto his cloak when Techno rode him! 

That would be fun, too. Like a ghost kite! 

Phil had some spare blue. It made his head hurt less, but he knew Phil was sad, too. He made sure to give him some blue, not _his_ blue but the _other blue,_ just as familiar but not quite the same. His was more personal, but Phil seemed attached to the _other_ blue. The blue that could be used to enchant things. That blue was useful too, but not as good as his. His was better. 

He liked blue. It was so very different from the **_~~blood~~_** cranberry sauce that **_~~the butcher army~~_** his friends had had all over them, earlier! That had made him think _sad thoughts,_ and reminded him of _sad things._ He knew because his head had another hole in it, where he was missing time. It was easier to recognize when he forgot things if he moved a lot. 

He tried to remember, but all he could remember was some vague sense of stress, standing somewhere, then it was gone and he had been with Friend surrounded by people in another place. He wondered what he was thinking about. _~~An execution stand as his brother stood in a cage he couldn’t escape, his own uncertainty and fear, Phil’s agonized expression as he watched unable to help and struggling to hold himself back from jumping down and ripping his sword through them all, struggling because that was his grandson and Tommy’s best friend, Tommy’s brother without blood, and Phil hated hurting family -~~_

It probably wasn’t important. 

Right?


	12. We're just a bunch of broken hearts (pretending to be whole) (Words:2005)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We all whisper and wonder about Ghostbur remembering what he had done when he'd gone feral in life. But what about when he was soft and hurting, just a big brother and a father trying so, so hard to protect his family, his people, his hope?

Ghostbur had tried to watch over Tubbo a bit more, recently. It was easy to forget how young they all were. But Tommy would be safe with Techno and Phil, and Ghostbur was needed in other places than the Antarctic Anarchy, so he went back to L’manberg, just to visit. 

Maybe nobody else noticed, but Ghostbur did. Maybe it was the part of him that remembered how hard presidency had been. Maybe it was the part of him that remembered sobbing into his pillow when the stress had been too much. Maybe it was the part of him, bloodstained and victorious after a victorious revolution, that recognized it. 

Tubbo was… unhappy. Stressed. It was clear in the tension of his shoulders, the way he fussed with his tie and how he combed his hair almost obsessively. It was the way his lips twisted and his eyebrows furrowed in frustration when people talked over him, the way he looked so _tired._

Ghostbur floated soundlessly towards where the boy was sitting on the edge of the main platform, staring down at the water and the fish that Phil had brought in to fill the crater. He didn’t say anything as he sat by the newer president’s side, and offered blue with a soft rustle of his sweater pocket. 

Tubbo glanced at him, eyes tired and lips pulling into a halfhearted smile as he took the blue, holding it in his hands as though it were far more precious than it was. 

He thought for a moment, then gently grabbed Tubbo’s wrist with blue-stained fingertips. The shorter man froze, but Ghostbur merely took the hand in his own and wrapped his own fingers around warm living ones, a comforting action that would usually be overlooked. 

“Isn’t it a bit funny that even as a ghost I’m taller than you?” Ghostbur teased, and was treated with a small genuine smile and a huff of laughter. 

“Seems a bit unfair, actually!” Tubbo replied, and Ghostbur was satisfied to see the familiar crinkle at the corner of his eyes even if it was only briefly. 

“I don’t know, it seems pretty fair to me.” Ghostbur hummed, pretending to lean on Tubbo’s head. The president snorted, and waved at Ghostbur until he floated off a little ways, hands raised with fingers splayed in defeat. “Okay, spoilsport!” 

They were quiet for a while, content to sit on the edge of the wooden pier. _Is it a pier if the water isn’t the sea?_

He shakes the question off, looking down at their reflections. His own is merely a smear of strangely-reflected light, more like white glints of stars than a person. Tubbo’s face is downcast, and the ghost doesn’t know how to help. _Maybe he doesn’t like being reminded I’m dead._

Ghostbur thinks back to when they had crossed through the nether, when he had admitted his grief of never being given a gravestone. 

_Maybe I just remind him too much of Alivebur, sometimes. Maybe it’s like with Tommy, that it’s easier for him to think I am alive because it soothes his own aches._

He thinks for a moment, swinging his legs a bit just to watch his shattered reflection spasm across the water like a borealis was trapped underneath the surface. _Maybe,_ Ghostbur thinks, _he needs advice._

“Tubbo,” Ghostbur says hesitantly, and doesn’t meet the other’s eyes when he looks up at him. “Are you happy?” 

It’s silent for ever so slightly too long, and Ghostbur swallows even though he doesn’t need to. 

“I think so.” Tubbo says, but the words are uncertain and quiet. Ghostbur squeezes Tubbo’s hand in his own, vividly aware that no matter how small Tubbo seemed in comparison it was not because he was a child. Tubbo’s eyes were too dark, too aware for him to be a child. Still, he hopes that this simple comfort helps. The ghost knows he is cold, of course, but Tubbo doesn’t seem to mind when he holds his hand, just to comfort. It reassures him to feel the steady beat of Tubbo’s heart through his hand, and to feel that he’s still warm. 

There is no blood here. Just the soft stains of blue. 

He vaguely remembers being too-cold during the memories of his first term, warm in heart but frozen in hands. He must have been cold, for his hands to shake so much then. 

“You’re a good president, but sometimes… it gets to be a bit much. And you look so tired, Tubbo. I worry about you. I know you can take care of yourself, but I figured I could ask. Just to be sure.” 

They are quiet for a while, and Tubbo slowly leans against him. He slings an arm over his shoulders, and tries to feel a little bit warmer than just under room temperature for the younger man. He isn’t sure if it works, but it’s the thought that counts. 

“Tubbo.” Ghostbur says quietly, and hears a returned little hum in response. “Are you being pressured to do things by people?” 

Tubbo’s grip on his yellow sweater tightens, and Ghostbur withholds a wince as he feels pressure on his death-wound, raw and sensitive in the way it always got when serious things began to come to his mind. 

“I remember a lot of my first term, Tubbo.” The ghost of Wilbur Soot whispers, pushing the bangs out of Tubbo’s face absentmindedly. He had gotten too used to being around family, and Tubbo had always been a sort-of brother that Tommy had dragged into the family, even if Wilbur and Techno hadn’t been very brotherly, in retrospect. Tubbo didn’t seem to mind, which was good. Ghostbur struggled with figuring out how to show physical affection, mostly because people tended to flinch when he tried to hug them. 

He tried to think it was just because of the cold, because the other options made his heart feel wrong in his chest. 

“I remember a lot of things that happened that, now that I think about it, were not good for me. Being president isn’t easy, it’s hard and it’s often stressful and sometimes you feel like breaking. I think that’s one of the reasons you got elected, you know? You’re always so calm during stressful situations, or at least you try to be. Maybe you got it because you were around Tommy all the time, watching out for him.” 

He pretended not to feel the wetness of tears as Tubbo hid his face against him, and ignored the way it made him feel fuzzy where they began to soak his sweater in that strange way that made the world hiccup because he shouldn’t be corporeal enough to get wet at all. 

“I know you miss him. I miss him, too.” Ghostbur whispered, setting his chin on Tubbo’s head as the younger man hid his face into his chest. It felt… familiar. In a good way. He wrapped his arms around Tubbo without hesitation, let him try to burrow against him and disappear. Vaguely, he remembered doing the same with Tommy when Tommy had been much younger, before he’d grown past the need for “coddling” and such. 

He missed Tommy. 

“I think it was part of why I ran during the elections.” He admitted quietly, aware that Tubbo had stilled, was listening closely. “I was tired, and stressed. But I didn’t want to fail my people, and I wanted to keep them safe, and I was so tired of people not listening to me when I was trying to make sure nothing bad happened. Back then we were still on rocky terms with everyone, because it was all so fresh. I was happy, but I think I was breaking.” 

Tubbo clung a little tighter. Ghostbur gently combed his hair with his fingers and tried to think past the fog. 

“I told you that I remembered winning the election. I do. I remember it very well. But I know something bad happened after, because it gets foggy and it hurts to think about. But part of that happiness was the overwhelming dread, too. Because sometimes it feels like the president doesn’t get to be happy, Tubbo.” He whispered, like it was a secret that he shouldn’t have been sharing. 

“But that’s a lie.” Ghostbur squeezed gently, pulling back to smile at Tubbo. He ignored the way his whole being felt like it was melting, like it was being poured into the wrong mold. Didn’t notice the coat that laid out across the planks around them. Tubbo did notice, though - the shine of dim, half-remembered gold and the fine blue of a hand-crafted uniform, one that Wilbur himself had toiled upon for each of them to make them _perfect._

“But…” Tubbo struggled visibly, eyebrows low eyes wet at the corners. “How? How can you be happy when it feels like you’re carrying so much on your shoulders? How can I be happy knowing that me exiling Tommy hurt him so much he - “ His voice cut off in a choked sob. 

Ghostbur gently wiped the tears away with his thumbs, ignoring how he felt distinctly wrong where the wetness touched as he gathered Tubbo back into his arms unflinchingly. 

“Sometimes you don’t get a choice, Tubbo.” Ghostbur whispered, ignoring the way his chest felt like it had cracked, ignoring the wetness of his blood beginning to pool in a wound that had never and would never get a chance to heal. “How do you think I felt, Tubbo, when - “ He choked, and swallowed stiffly around the blood and blue in his mouth, because this was _important_. “When Eret betrayed us? I didn’t have any other choice but to go on. We had already bled, already died, already shed blood for it. How could I look at my loved ones, my people, and say _‘Give up”_ when we’ve all died for it?’” 

“I didn’t, because it wasn’t a choice.” He whispered, aware of how his voice wavered. “And really, between choosing Tommy and your people, it was your choice. You sacrificed for L’manberg, again. You’ve done it so many times, Tubbo. But you didn’t know. How could you have known?” 

Tubbo choked on a soft sob that he tried to suppress. Ghostbur struggled, trying to keep hold of a conversation that was fading almost as quickly as he said the words. Blue-black-red blood dripped from his lips and he was glad Tubbo couldn’t see the pain in his expression, hadn’t noticed his sweater beginning to stain from his death wound, hadn’t seen the stitches in the worn yellow wool beginning to fray. 

“Tubbo, I feel like it’s all happening again.” Ghostbur admitted quietly, and swallowed the blood in his throat. _~~Exile, blood and grief, redemption bathed in horror, and the cycle begins again.~~_ “Tubbo. Tubbo, I need you to listen.” 

He pulled up Tubbo’s face, cupped his cheeks in his cold hands as their eyes met. “Tubbo, please, I need you to keep eyes out for your Eret.” He whispered brokenly, eyes shutting tight as tears pooled out of his eyes and burnt tracks down his face that made him feel like he was fading at the edges, broken and shattered and useless. “Don’t let anyone twist you. Be you, and stand up, and be so, so strong like I know you can be. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Ghostbur cried, and Tubbo grasped at him weakly, pressing their foreheads together. 

“It’s okay.” Tubbo whispered, just as broken and shattered and grieving but Ghostbur couldn’t _tell him and it hurt like he was being pulled apart, drawn and quarters in so many different directions because -_

Ghostbur drowned, and when his eyes opened again he was confused, lost but warm-hearted, blue on his fingertips and blood on his lips as he held Tubbo and didn’t understand why the boy was crying. 

“Would you like some blue?” He asked softly, helplessly, and Tubbo laughed brokenly and tear-filled. 

“Of course, Wil.” Tubbo accepted, voice cracking, and his hands were stained just as blue as Ghostbur’s. 


	13. What's a little rain when compared to a thunderstorm (words: 1691)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i craved ghostbur ranboo bonding so i wrote it dont look at me

Sometimes it felt like the world was screaming and nobody could hear it but him. 

He watched L’manberg’s foundations crumble underneath the footsteps of someone who was too young to notice. He watched his brother regain his confidence, his eyes wary and his body still healing bruises that lay beneath the skin. He watched his father suffer, unable to help yet trying to as best he could anyway, wounded by people he’d trusted and tying bandages over an arrow wound that had burnt deeper than just the flesh. 

He watched his son struggle, eyebrows low and something suspicious in his gaze as he asked if he was sad. Watched Tubbo grow darker, saw the horns that weren’t there. Saw Quackity, eyes dark and rage in his blood to match his single heart on a wrist that used to have three. Saw Ranboo, caught in between war and strife just as much as he was the gray between the black and the white of the mask he hid behind. 

Ghostbur’s lips twitched, firming into a line. His heart stuttered in his chest, less a beat and more of a spasm, and blood stained his sweater. He thought of uniforms and trench coats, all stained in blood, one in hope and one in relief. 

_There’s something wrong._

His fingers twitched and he struggled to open his inventory because his hands were shaking, and blue hadn’t been able to soothe it quite as much recently. He couldn’t find the answer, couldn’t figure it out. _What is wrong?_ He asked, but nothing answered, and he didn’t expect one, really. 

Phil had disappeared, his house empty and dark. He knew that his father was safe but something inside him felt incorrect, like somehow the whole world had swapped an inch to one side and nobody had noticed it but him. 

Ghostbur stared at the crater, at the deck built over it, at the remains of an execution stand. Looked at what was once his home, what had been marred and destroyed and built over on crumbling foundations. 

He didn’t feel at home in L’manberg anymore. 

It didn’t feel safe. 

He clutched at his sweater to hide the shaking of his hands, tried to ignore the strange anxiety that was shivering in his heart. 

"Ghostbur?" A familiar voice asked, worried, concerned. _Ranboo?_

"Ranboo?" Ghostbur echoed, and felt something inside him settle. Ranboo was safe. An ally. He didn't look at Ghostbur like he was a monster, and the relief he felt warmed him. The young man was too new to know Alivebur, had only ever known Ghostbur, and even though people had told him about Alivebur… Well. Ranboo still treated him well, even though Ghostbur knew he must have heard about how awful he’d been when he was alive. 

"Can you help me please?" Ghostbur asked, aware of how lost he sounded. 

"Of course." Ranboo reassured the ghost. "I was just about to head inside anyway, since the rain clouds are heading in." 

Ghostbur glanced up and saw the heavy clouds rolling in. He hadn't even noticed. He followed Ranboo into his home, met with the soft buzz of a sleepy bee and smiled despite himself. He relaxed, floating awkwardly as he watched Ranboo putter about his house, listening to the soft sounds of friendly Enderman that echoed between Ranboo’s house guest and Ranboo himself.. 

The younger man had asked him if it was okay to live here, since Alivebur had owned the house. Ghostbur was glad he'd said yes. The young half-enderman seemed quite happy here, and Ghostbur felt happy that he was happy. 

“Can you talk to them?” Ghostbur asked, looking at the enderman politely so as not to make them mad. They really were quite tall, and he wondered if this was where Ranboo had gotten his height from. Tubbo barely came up to Ranboo’s shoulder, after all - but then, Tubbo had always been kind of short. Like Niki. _~~Who hadn’t even met him yet.~~_

“Well.” Ranboo hummed, and Ghostbur looked back to him. “Sort of? It’s not really a language you can learn, I think.” 

“Aw. I think I would like to talk to more people.” Ghostbur proclaimed, hovering above one of Ranboo’s chests with his legs crossed. Ranboo’s bee buzzed over to sit in his lap, and Ghostbur gently pet the soft fuzz, turning the collar around it to read the scrawled _Mr Buzzy_ on the tag fondly. 

He did not notice Ranboo’s startled glance. “Do you think of Enderman as people?” He asked, but the words were hesitant, as though bracing for something. 

“Well, of course they’re people!” Ghostbur laughed. “A little strange of course, but who isn’t? It just makes them unique. Like people are all unique. So surely they’re people, too? Besides, they don’t mind keeping me company under the trees when it rains.” 

Ranboo smiled, and Ghostbur could tell because his eyes crinkled a bit. His still heart warmed in his chest and he smiled down at the bee who had fallen asleep in his lap, petting at the fuzz and avoiding the wings as it buzzed with each itty bitty inhale, like it was snoring. 

“Most of the people here do not like talking to me I think.” Ghostbur admitted, watching Ranboo as he gently rolled some dough to make some bread in his furnaces. There was, he noticed, some lack of food in the house. Maybe Ranboo just carried it with him all the time, like most people did? 

“That’s okay, sometimes I spend a whole day without talking to anyone, too.” Ranboo reassured him with a smile. Ghostbur frowned, fussing with the sleeves of his sweater. 

“It used to be that you couldn’t go even a few hours without being talked to, here.” He said quietly. 

Ranboo tilted his head at him, sitting on a chest to look at the friendly neighbourhood ghost floating in his house as the dough baked in his furnace. “Really? Do you uh… remember much of L’manberg, and how it was back then? I think it would be nice to hear about how the town was before. Y’know.” 

Ghostbur nodded, excited at the show of interest. 

“Yes! Well, I remember some of it at least. There used to be these big black walls you see - “ 

“Like the ones Dream built?” Ranboo asked hesitantly. 

“No, no.” Ghostbur waved it off dismissively. “They were to protect! They were reassuring, not a prison. Oh, well, I suppose Dream’s were to protect, too, weren’t they?” The words were hesitant, and his brows furrowed with uncertainty. 

“Yeah… let’s go with that.” 

“Well, the walls were to protect. L’manberg was a place of safety, you see! Anyone could walk freely without armor on, without worry of being attacked. That was the whole point y’know? That people could just… live, and be safe. I was really good at settling stuff like that, so that everyone was at peace. Of course, outside L’manberg everyone was subjected to other rules, but L’manberg was safe. Like the holy land! Y’know?” 

Ranboo hummed, and took off his helmet slowly. “Yeah. I get it.” He said, putting it aside. Ghostbur smiled at him, bright and happy and warm, and Ranboo smiled back. 

He hesitated. 

“Things have been changing recently, though.” Ghostbur admitted, voice strained. “People wear armor a lot around L’manberg now. I think because it’s dangerous. And… you know, the other day when Techno came back - “ 

He winced, and pulled his fingers away from the bee who buzzed away to sit on one of the chests instead as Ghostbur held his blue so tightly his fingers began to stain. 

“Yeah,” Ranboo whispered, “I get it. It’s hard to remember.” 

“Yeah.” Ghostbur echoed, his smile hesitant and strained and hurt. 

They were quiet for a while. Ranboo took the freshly baked bread from the furnace and set it aside, and cut it carefully with a knife. When he offered Ghostbur a slice he smiled. 

“Oh - wait, I never even thought about it -” 

“No! It’s fine, I can eat.” Ghostbur reassured him, gently nipping into the bread with no further comment. It was still warm and quite good, and Ranboo smiled at him as he turned to get himself a slice as well. They were quiet, munching away as the rain pattered on the windows. 

“Will you visit Techno?” Ranboo asked. “To make sure he’s okay and all that?” 

Ghostbur blinked at him, eyes wide and innocent. “Of course. He’s my brother, you know?” 

Ranboo blinked back at him. Ghostbur liked his eyes - the different shades matched well, red and green reminding Ghostbur of the christmas seasons and the tree he’d made to cheer up Tommy. Ranboo reminded Ghostbur of gifts and cold seasons turned warm with family and friends. It was a good thing to associate him with. Something just as kind as he was. 

“I didn’t know that, actually.” Ranboo chirped, and Ghostbur smiled. 

“Yeah! He’s older, but only by two minutes. Sometimes we joke that I was the older brother, but Tommy’s the youngest. He really acts like it too, sometimes. I think I’ll visit him when the rain ends, maybe. Just to cheer him up. Techno tries to act like it bothers him when we visit, but I know he enjoys it when Phil visits, so I like to think he enjoys having guests.” Ghostbur declared, chomping into the bread again as though he had just said some great wisdom. 

“Maybe I can visit sometime. I have a gift for Phil anyway. Maybe I can bring one for Techno? I think I have some of his stuff that he lost to give to him...” 

“I think he would like that.” 

Ghostbur curled into the warmth of the house, watching the bee buzz about as they slowly made their way through the loaf of bread. It was still warm when the rain abated to a light drizzle, and then finally stopped. It was comfortable, and a pleasant experience that Ghostbur would willingly repeat if given the chance. 

At least there was still something good, here. Something that made the wrongness feel a little more right. 

_It’s not all gone yet._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i actually really enjoy ranboo's character even though i dont actually watch him as much as i want to, and the fact that he and ghostbur can relate about a lot of things (l'manberg isn't super picky about hybrids ofc but its easy to imagine that some places are, and ranboo being half enderman made my brain go "hey what if ghostbur and him bonded about being seen as monsters by normal people as well as the rain and the snow and their awful memory (and also being tall because wtf why is everyone a giant on this server??))
> 
> i also enjoy ranboo being a sort of halfway point between tommy and tubbo right now. genuinely, he seems like his kindness and the way his loyalty works is good for him and others. tubbo having someone to trust (he hasnt figured out ranboo gave techno his stuff back yet i think which will be juicy) and stuff is good. also him being close to phil made me sort of clap and also go "mhm yes dadza saw a random kid with no parents and went "oo a piece of candy" just like he did w/ wil and techno and tommy" hahahaha
> 
> but lets be real, the antarctic anarchy is just a hideaway in the snow where phils family all escaped to bc they were done w/ the rest of the server and honestly? good on them im loving the family arc goin on rn. im kind of hoping that when they go to the new world they actually manage to revive wilbur (which has been talked about before very briefly) and just run off to go be fam somewhere and other people just... end up joining them and they live in a ravine and some lush caves and vibe by a campfire and get some family therapy bc my god theyre all messes pretending to be people hiding in trench coats (wilbur especially if he gets his memory back)


	14. We're just hollow hearts pretending to feel (Words: 1098)

“Dream,” Ghostbur says into the quiet as they walk through the snow, a random thought having popped into his head. “When we had the revolution… Were you mad because we were claiming your land, or were you mad because you thought we were leaving you?” 

Dream freezes, and Ghostbur knows he has said something wrong. Dream is silent for a long moment, and he wishes he could see how upset he’s made the man at the very least. He always manages to say the wrong thing, somehow, but… It felt important. They had been good friends, once. 

“Wilbur…” Dream says slowly, warningly, but Ghostbur continues, because he needs to _know, he needs to be known, he needs to tell him._

“Because I never meant to make you feel like we were leaving you, you know? I just… wanted a place where everyone was equal. And nobody would ever be in danger. Because sometimes it felt like the only really safe place was the Holy Land, and… Well. I just wanted… to be safe.” He says, weakly. 

The clouds Dream made when he breathed were all he received in response for a bit, forming condensation around the edges of the mask. 

Ghostbur clenched at his sweater miserably, eyes vaguely wet in a way that felt more painful and fuzzy than like actual tears. His edges melted a bit in response. “Because I know that recently you’ve been talking with Tommy a lot. I think… Dream, are you lonely?” 

He doesn’t mention how people have been whispering about how Dream had fallen out with his friends recently. He doesn’t, but somehow he knows Dream is thinking about it anyway by how the man’s shoulders tense up and he pulls his hoodie strings that tiniest bit tighter, the way he speeds up and begins to walk just slightly too fast as Ghostbur floats behind him, wanting to amend but not knowing how. 

“I was always your friend, you know, Dream?” He whispers, and sees Dream’s shoulders shake minutely in response. “And… I wish I could be better. Wish I could help you fill in that hole, even if I know I can’t replace them. I just… I want everyone to be friends again. I know I’m not enough.” 

Dream lifts his head sharply, stopping and turning to Ghostbur, and he flinches back, hovering awkwardly as he blinks at Dream with wide eyes. 

“Wilbur, I… Ghostbur.” Dream says, and his voice is hard but Ghostbur can feel the ache there even if he couldn’t hear it. 

“You can talk to me.” Ghostbur whispers, and offers blue-stained hands. Dream stills, mask tilted slightly down, and Ghostbur can see his hands clench slightly. 

“You’ll just forget.” Dream says, as though reassuring himself, and Ghostbur winces but knows it’s probably true. 

“I made this world for them. For everyone.” Dream says finally, and Ghostbur takes his hand gently. The fist unclenches almost unconsciously in response, and Ghostbur gently places a wad of blue into his hand and closes his fingers over it, just holding. Comforting as best as he can, worthlessly. 

“It was like you took it and spit it in my face, at the time. But I know now, I get it, I understand. I… Once I told you, well, I told Alivebur and Tommy that I’d had a change of heart. I’ll always be bitter about L’manberg, but I get it, now. Wanting that safe place. And George did, too. It was a safe place, but…” And his words trailed. 

“Everyone makes mistakes.” Ghostbur whispered softly, and Dream pulled his hand away, leaving Ghostbur with nothing to hold as he gathered his hands in front of his chest. Dream did the same, fingers clenched tight around the blue. 

“I made too many, Wilbur.” Dream says, and Ghostbur does not correct him. 

They are quiet for a moment, long enough that the sky is darker. No monsters come near, but he isn’t sure if it’s because of the too-young god in front of him or if it is because Ghostbur himself is a monster, too. 

“I made mistakes too.” Ghostbur whispered. 

“Some of those are mine to share.” Dream echoes, turning away. The light of the torch in his hand is flickering, and Ghostbur watches him with sad eyes. 

“Dream…” Ghostbur begins hesitantly, and Dream’s mask lifts, empty gaze meeting his own sad one. “Dream, are you mean to… Are you mean to Tommy because you are afraid that he’ll leave you like they did? Are you afraid that if other people visit and stuff, he’ll go back with them? Is that why?” He asks, referring to Dream’s other friends, and Dream’s hand clenches on the wood of the torch so hard it splinters. 

Ghostbur winces. 

“Ghostbur.” Dream says warningly, darkly, and Ghostbur shakes slightly. 

“I’m sorry.” He whispers, and Dream tears himself away, paces nearby as he searches for a way to answer, looks inside himself and - 

Ghostbur blinks at Dream with confusion. “Dream?” He asks, innocent and light and unaware of the brokenness that walked in front of him, ~~dark and dangerous and so terribly alone _just like Alivebur had thought he’d been_~~

“Where are we? Why are we out here?” Ghostbur asked.

Dream froze, still for a long moment, then turned to Ghostbur. “Oh, I just came to talk to you about something.” He says, and Ghostbur doesn’t notice the disbelief in his voice, merely blinks at him with confusion.

“About what?”

“Tommy… gave me new invitations. He said you were taking a while, and he’d written new ones, and asked me to give them out instead, since he’d changed the time. I just came over to ask for the old ones, you know?”

“Oh. Oh!” Ghostbur said, brightly. “Sure! I have them here.” He rustled in his bag and handed over the envelope, and smiled. He hoped Dream was smiling back, but it was a little hard to tell with the mask on. Maybe his face had been cold.

“Hey, Ghostbur. Why don’t you go for a walk for a while in the wilderness?” Dream asked as he read the envelopes and invitations, and Ghostbur thought about it.

“Sure!” He said brightly, and turned, and left.

Dream stared after him, dumbstruck, and Ghostbur was long gone by the time he tried to find the ghost before he went and got himself lost.

He was too late.

~~Dream tried not to feel guilty about that, but he did not see Ghostbur a long while after, and it haunted him as much as the words that his once-friend-once-foe-once-ally-now-ghost had said to him.~~


	15. I’m so fucking tired of people hurting the ones i love (so ill just fucking take care of you myself) (Words: 1325)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to take out my suppressed rage and Ghostbur also conveniently has a murderous streak inside him a mile wide, and the community craves feral Ghostbur/Wilbur content. So. I mean. Who am I to refuse some good ol' Ghost Murder?

Ghostbur felt it when the death message went out on everyone’s communicators. Something _tugged_ at him. He turned to look past the water, towards where the Final Control Room lay, and his eyes darkened.

**Quackity was slain by Technoblade**

Ghostbur had smiled like nothing was wrong, and turned back to Phil. Phil, who had been tending an arrow wound. Phil, who could not leave his house. Now, though, hours later, he was free to do what he’d wanted to earlier. Phil was asleep, Ranboo was asleep, Tubbo was asleep, Quackity was asleep. Friend was safe in Phil’s house.

He smiled, leaving the house quietly so as not to wake his father. He’d kept him company most of the day, and he had enjoyed the time he’d spent there. But Ghostbur didn’t really need to sleep, rarely slept anyway, so this was the best time to figure out what he’d felt earlier.

The wind was cold as he travelled to the hole in the ground, blocked with cobble. He slipped inside through a gap and walked further in, peering at tracks of mud left by hooves and boots. Still fresh from earlier, but not as fresh as the blood that was spattered across the walls and floor deeper in the tunnel.

Ghostbur stared at the stains for a long moment, fingers clenching tight in the soft wool of his sweater.

_He tried to hurt Techno._

_They did hurt Techno._

_They hurt Phil._

He stilled and thought for a long moment, staring at the blood on the ground. Blackstone and stone, closing walls in on him as swords spilt blood and he saw Tommy and Tubbo and the rest fall, eyes blank - 

_Felt the button give under his fingertips, heard the hiss and the breath of shock behind him, felt feathers enfold him protectively as impact slammed into them both, as blood dripped thick as he was held tightly and tears stained his neck like acid as the guilt and shame and relief crept into his heart -_

_I hurt them too._

Wilbur stared at the blood and licked his lips slowly, backing up. The walls closed in on him, tight and judging and full of eyes, and the songs in his head grew shrill and sharp and _ticking -_

He skimmed across the water, collected the anvil from the stand, and floated up the wooden platforms to Quackity’s house. Some part of him wanted to use the sword he had never used on a person, but… Well, it was more personal this way. He considered Quackity where he lay sleeping with dark eyes, then went upstairs further, placing the anvil gently on the roof and making sure it didn’t slide.

It was the simplest thing in the world to break the wood under it using the anvil’s weight. It plummeted sharply downwards, crashing through the wooden floor underneath -

Blood spattered across the bed and the floor.

Wilbur floated down the hole, standing on the anvil and leaning forward to peer down into Quackity’s shocked eyes. He tilted his head slowly.

“Ghostbur?” Quackity wheezed, reaching towards the ghost. “Get help - “ He coughed.

Wilbur stared down at him, his trench coat heavy on his shoulders. Quackity’s eyes went wide, and Wilbur smiled.

“I really don’t like it when people threaten my family.” Wilbur whispered, crouching to cross his arms over his knees and watched Quackity struggle to breathe. It was far faster than Wilbur wanted, really.

But it was such a poetic way for him to die, crushed just like he’d intended for Techno to be.

Wilbur left before the death message went out, floating slightly above the second bed on Phil’s second floor and watching over his father as he slept. His eyes were dark and glinting red in the dim light from outside, the moonlight casting through the window. Wilbur did not cast a shadow, but for a brief moment he could pretend he was alive, just spending the night with his father as a corpse cooled only a few buildings away.

Wilbur kept watch through the night, letting his mere presence keep the monsters away as he watched through the window. His father slept peacefully through the night in the dark, only the dim speckled light of Wilbur’s ghostly form keeping the darkness at bay as he sat on Phil’s bed beside him, staring at the burnt remains of Phil’s wings.

Wings that had been damaged protecting _him._

_I hurt them too._

He woke Phil when the light of the sun started glinting over the horizon, eyes still dark and his coat replaced by a sweater instead. His fingertips were stained blue and the marred blackness of his wrists where his hearts used to be was stark against his pale flesh, his sweater slightly stained with red.

“Phil.” Ghostbur whispered. “Get up.”

Phil groaned as he got up, but didn’t complain. “What is it, Ghostbur? It’s not even daylight yet.”

“Don’t look at your communicator.” Ghostbur said, sitting on the end of Phil’s bed and grabbing at the tracker around his ankle. Phil froze, staring, and put his communicator on his bedside table again. It continued to beep plaintively.

“Hold still.” He grabbed the shackle, clenched his hands and _pulled._ The world twitched, and the metal began to bend under his fingertips. It snapped apart, splintering metal, and he ignored where they briefly caught in his still-corporeal hands and the wounds began to leak spectral blue blood.

“Wil - ?” Phil tried softly, eyes wide with shock.

“They hurt you.” Ghostbur said, glancing at the bandaged wound of Phil’s shoulder. “I’m not going to let them do it again, like they did to Techno. So… I’m gonna try something that I haven’t tried before.”

There were a lot of books and myths on ghosts, but Ghostbur had long since realized he wasn’t really like a normal ghost. There was something with permanent solidity to him, and it took great focus for him to float higher than a meter at best, or to phase through things.

But he hadn’t tried this yet. Something told him, though, that this little spark of madness that gave him the idea meant that it would probably _work,_ somehow.

He grabbed Phil’s hand and _felt,_ and vanished.

Phil jolted back, glancing around wildly. “Ghostbur? Wil?”

_I need you to fly, Ghostbur whispered._

His father’s eyebrows furrowed. “But I can’t, my wings - “ He said, spreading them and looking and -

Phil stared blankly.

His wings shone, burnt patches of feathers replaced with clear figments of them. Each shone with a strange light, one that was far too similar to Ghostbur’s glow for it to be anything but the ghost’s involvement. As he watched, he felt the strange itch he associated with his feathers growing a new set, and watched as the keratin sheathes of new feathers grew. Blood dripped from his wings from the too-fast growth.

“But - but _how?_ ”

_Better not to think about it. Ghostbur suggested, aware of the dim well inside himself that was leaking with every moment wasted as he used pieces of himself to heal his father’s wounds. Go._

Phil picked away the keratin quickly, shaking his wings out and unintentionally spattering blood over his room as he opened the doors of his balcony. He leapt and his wings caught the air, and in moments he was shooting up into the skies, turning towards where he knew Techno’s house was and soaring on broad ash-gray wings towards _home._

Ghostbur collapsed formlessly in Phil’s room, trying to remember how to exist. The fuzzy half-between space of existing and not existing was hard to fight, and eventually he reformed as he gathered enough of himself again.

“Note to self. Don’t do that often.” He rasped to himself, poking at the well of his life-force where his dead heart laid. It was much less than he was used to having, and he phased through a wall without even trying.

Then he heard the scream.

_Wilbur smiled._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted feral ghostbur ngl ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> but also its hard to commit murder when theres legit a death message that goes to the whole server so like. anvil go bonk.


	16. We're all family (even if we're good at hurting eachother) (Words:1271)

“It’s not like we’ll hurt him, Tubbo. He’s a ghost.” Quackity snorted, and Tubbo didn’t say anything. 

It seemed wrong, doing this. Summoning the friendly ghost just to interrogate him like this, like they had with Phil. Phil had left for a _reason,_ Phil had escaped by _hurting himself until his shackles broke_. It all felt wrong, but Quackity had told Tubbo it was fine, that it was for L’manberg, so surely…? 

Then why did it hurt, if it was for L’manberg? 

Tubbo swallowed but nodded, tight and sharp, and finished the circle on the ground. He had never thought he’d use his training in the supernatural for this, for summoning his friend, the ghost of his once-brother and once-general, the founder of the very nation he was president of, to interrogate a dead man. 

Summoning ghosts was simple because it only ever really worked if the ghost agreed to it. Ghosts were not beholden to rules or laws, beyond the land of the living but between the realm of the dead. Really, the circles used to summon ghosts were the closest to those used to summon gods because they had the option to refuse being summoned. 

You couldn’t keep ghosts in one place unless they agreed to come, but they’d never doubted that Ghostbur wouldn’t come. The ghost was still fresh, and had never been summoned before. There was no surprise when he answered the summons, bright and gold and smiling - 

Tubbo closed his eyes and tried to ignore the way his hands were shaking. 

“I’ll let you go if you just _tell me where Technoblade is,_ Ghostbur.” 

“I - I - I _can’t_ -” Ghostbur cried, and sobbed as water was splashed on him again. He looked like he was in pain, suffering, and Tubbo couldn’t look. 

Ghostbur had been with family when he’d been pulled, and he’d followed it because he knew Tubbo, had trusted him. Now here he was, trapped, contained against his will. He just needed to break it, but breaking the circle would hurt Tubbo, and the ghost cared _too much._

And it was breaking him. 

“You just have to lead us there. That’s all.” 

Ghostbur shook, fuzzy at the edges as blue blood and water leaked from him onto the floor. One of his eyes had long gone black, unseeing, and his sweater dripped yellow far more than it should. He was strong, though - the strongest ghost that Tubbo had ever heard of, even though he’d died a violent death. But he was cracking, splintering. His blood was glinting red, and his eyes were shining with something far worse, something that made Tubbo shiver and had his firework scars burning with remembered pain. 

“Quackity, stop.” Tubbo whispered. 

“Not until he shows us, Tubbo.” 

Ghostbur twitched, his sweater fading from yellow to an off-brown and his eyes glinting, and Tubbo flinched back. 

“Quackity…” He warned, but the other man didn’t _listen_. He never did, to Tubbo. 

_Ghostbur snapped._

In seconds he leaped forward, form shivering and dark and _vengeful,_ and Quackity flinched back from the barrier as it cracked. The ghost screamed, blood and fire and _pain,_ and the barrier cracked, broke, shattered. He winced as the spell crackled with feedback and all his nerves lit alight with it, but he was used to working through pain and this was more important than any pain he felt because Wilbur was going to _kill Quackity -_

“Go!” Tubbo called, stepping in front of Quackity as the other man backpedaled and ran. The ghost stilled, staring at Tubbo for a long moment and Tubbo firmed himself despite the way he was shaking. 

“Wilbur…” He whispered, and the ghost flinched as though struck. 

_“Go home.”_ Tubbo said, and Wilbur stared at him, eyes blank and empty and his trenchcoat dark behind him, fingers clawed and blood dripping from his mouth. “They’re worried about you, I bet.” 

He stood still, trying to ignore how his hands shook. He swallowed as the ghost reached for him, so frigidly cold, and ignored the urge to step back. Because he was _terrified,_ terrified of the ghost that used to be his brother, because all it was was fire and madness and pain compacted into a thin shell of blue and hope and trying, the shell that they’d cracked. 

**“You hurt me.”** Wilbur said, voice wrong in a way that Tubbo’s brain couldn’t comprehend. 

“Yeah.” Tubbo said, swallowing thickly again past the tennis ball of fear in his throat. “I’m sorry.” 

**“You tried to hurt my family.”** Wilbur said again, voice flat and dark. 

“They hurt me, too, Wil.” Tubbo replied, touching the marks on his face. Wilbur tracked his hand, looking at the scars for a long moment. 

Wilbur’s face softened and for a moment he looked vulnerable, pained. His other eye had begun to heal from the damage the water had done, and Tubbo just… _Gods, he looks like he did that night before the war, stressed and tired and hurting, madness in his eyes and grief in his bones._

**“You are family, too.”** Wilbur whispers, reaching, and there is pain in his face as he touches Tubbo’s hand where it was over the scars on his face. The touch was gentle, and his fingertips were freezing, but Tubbo did not flinch. 

“Am I?” Tubbo asked, and his voice was choked, his laughter pained. 

**“Always.”** Wilbur promised, his voice soft and his eyes tired. **“Always family. Always were. Hurt you, too.”**

“No,” Tubbo said, and was quieted by cold fingertips over his face, silencing him. 

**“Hurt all of you.”**

Tubbo met Wilbur’s eyes, broken and tired and empty, and felt as though he was looking in a mirror. He remembered Pogtopia, and how Wilbur had always looked like he was nursing an injury. How he had hidden away, terrified of both himself and others. Paranoia had eaten his brother from inside, and Tubbo had done nothing. 

**“You are… always welcome home.”** The ghost said, voice strained and tired. **“Will protect you, if you come?”** The words were hopeful, and Tubbo swallowed. 

“I can’t, Wil.” He whispered, tears in the corners of his eyes. “I have to stay.” 

Wilbur was silent, searching Tubbo’s face. There was understanding there, though. **“Prisoner too?”**

“Not a prisoner, just - “ 

**“Obligation is prison as much as prison is prison.”** Wilbur interrupted, and Tubbo shivered as he was enveloped into a hug. The ghost was freezingly cold, vengeful and hurting where he was usually just under lukewarm. The wound across his chest was too-warm, like the fire of the blade that killed him remained burning inside him. Still, the hug was reassuring, and Tubbo’s heart was warmer for it. 

Wilbur was all sharp edges, smoothing out the longer his target was out of view, and Tubbo remembered being much younger and capturing Wilbur’s legs in a hug, his big adoptive brother lugging him around like an oddly shaped shoe with only an exasperated smile and a laugh. Tubbo’s eyes wet with tears, and Wilbur did not complain as they sizzled against too-cold not-skin like dry ice in the sea. 

**“Always room for you, little brother.”** Wilbur whispered, squeezing Tubbo tight and then pushing away. Blood dripped from his lips when he smiled, and it spattered on the ground from his wound, and Tubbo swallowed thickly past the grief and relief to give him a smile. 

“One day.” Tubbo promised, and Wilbur smiled a little softer, a little prouder. 

**“I’m sorry.”**

Then Wilbur was gone, a wisp of white smoke left in his wake, and Tubbo crumpled to the ground with a sob and fire in his eyes, angry and grieving and determined. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> people often forget that tubbo is canonically part of the philza family tree. he was adopted from a box. give this poor child a hug.


	17. Promises (Words:1951)

Lots of people ask Ghostbur what the afterlife is like, what dying for the final time felt like. For each of them, his answer is slightly different. 

When Phil asks, it’s simple. “There’s nothing, just a vast emptiness. It isn’t really cold or warm, but it is lonely. So I came back, because I knew I had something I needed to do. I think now that the thing I needed was family.” He had told him, and if Phil’s eyes watered he said nothing, just sat next to him and hummed. 

For Tommy, it’s different. “I like to think of it like a long road, or maybe a railway over a landscape that you can never recognize. One day, you just stop leaving footprints, and your shadow isn’t there to tell the time, just the people around you. But if you move forward, there is always more to explore and experience.” 

Techno hadn’t asked, but Ghostbur had told him anyway. “It’s like the whole world goes quiet, and nothing hurts anymore. There isn’t any sound, or thoughts, or words, or anything. There are no songs there. You are just… there. Existing. It’s nice, but I missed everyone. There was so much I never got to say, and so much that people didn’t hear.” 

Quackity. “It’s like being compressed constantly, until eventually you pop.” He whispered, watching Quackity and pretending that some deep part of him didn’t want to rip the man apart for hurting his family. Pretended that he didn’t stink of attempted necromancy and black magic, that he couldn’t tell that Quackity had been up to no good. 

Tubbo he was gentler with, but the words were similar. “Sometimes it feels like you’re carrying something that always gets heavier. I’ve been carrying mine for so long that it feels like I have already been crushed, and I haven’t realized it yet!” Ghostbur smiled, but it was empty and distant. It had not reassured the kid at all. 

Fundy had taken a longer time to ask. Ghostbur had to think about it for a while, and his words were hesitant and said slowly. “I think… it’s like fire and pressure, melting and remaking and reforging you until you are unrecognizable. Then it’s just all empty, and there’s nothing. No temperature, no bone or blood or existing. I was always afraid of being alone, I think, because I couldn’t stand the emptiness. So I came back. I felt like there was something I needed to do. I just… never knew what it was.” 

Eret had never asked. Ghostbur had never offered. Something in the way the crowned man looked at him made him aware that somehow, Eret knew even though he’d never asked. Knew by the way Ghostbur went back and forth between shaking himself into a fuzz or stood too-still when he saw him. Once, he had apologized, quiet and weary. Ghostbur had blinked at him, and accepted it. He couldn’t remember what it was for, but when he touched Eret’s hand all he’d seen was blackstone and blood, and felt betrayal. 

Punz and Ponk never asked. George didn’t either. Sapnap had asked very quietly in passing once, and Ghostbur knew (he didn’t know how) that Sapnap had never been there, not for when Alivebur was slain, but he had been there before a long time ago. “It’s like going to sleep forever watching a war outside a window you didn’t know you had.” Ghostbur had smiled. 

The final one to ask him was Dream. Ghostbur had been standing silently on a hill, and didn’t remember when he had gotten there. The snow was thick underneath him, and the flakes fell slowly yet never touched him. The world felt miniscule and tiny for a split moment, and then there had been green. A familiar mask, an old friend. One he dimly remembered eating with, ignoring the blood they both shared on their hands and talking quietly together in the middle of a field of war on a wooden bridge surrounded in hostile figures of basalt and blood and enchantments. 

“Dream.” Ghostbur asked, his voice small and almost-not-quite scared. “What is it like to live?” 

Dream had been quiet for a long time, staring up at the clouds with the ghost of someone he had once known. Someone who had once been vibrant and beautiful in his madness, as sharp and quick as any blade. Someone who had beaten him in a game of wits, yet just as easily invited him out for dinner. Someone who he’d fought against, with, and beside. Someone who was a shell of who he had been, like his death had emptied him of all the most beautiful things and left a hollow mirror in his place. 

“It’s like thinking, but you never stop.” Dream says finally, and when he breathes out the condensation of his breath makes a fog in the air under the rim of his mask. “It always feels like things are too fast, slipping through your fingers and yet remaining where they were the whole time. It’s being alone and having too much, being empty yet full. Sometimes too full, to the point that it hurts. Like your heart will burst from your chest. It’s the wind and the lightning, the storms and the waves. It’s all of those things.” 

Ghostbur looked at the stars beside him, too-still and strange to look at. Dream’s eyes told him there was a person. Dream’s eyes also told him that this person was only half-there, the glint of the stars just as vibrant through the form beside him. Ghostbur’s chest did not move, and some part of Dream missed just seeing Wilbur alive and as vibrant as any wildfire. 

Ghostbur was just the smoldering ashes left of Wilbur’s fuse, long ignited and long-betrayed. Trapped between three impossible options, betrayed and used and maddened. Wilbur, who had begged to be put down when he didn’t die in the explosion like a rabid dog, desperate to die and terrified to live. Not because he was avoiding, but because he was terrified of what he was, and what he would do. 

Dream and Wilbur had been very familiar, by the end. He had seen the man’s cracks unfolding like a flower in the darkest of days, each petal vibrantly red and gold like blood and bone and fire until it burnt Wilbur into a pile of nothing and his ghost was born from the ashes. 

Wilbur had started like a spark, burnt long and bright, and died like a star in the night. A supernova, confined into a mortal body. 

Dream often wondered what it would have been like if Wilbur had survived. If the man had chosen to live, instead of asking to die. He’d seen Wilbur jump into the fray of battle without armor, a smile on his face, and he’d known that Wilbur had never intended to survive. 

At the time he’d felt nothing. What was another death to a hardened warrior like Dream? 

But then the battle was over, L’manberg was a crater, and the grief biting at Dream’s heels caught up with him. Wilbur had fought like a rabid animal, as bloodthirsty as any mad dog. Without an enemy to fight, he’d turned on himself, had chewed himself up until he’d killed himself in the end. 

Dream had helped him do that. 

Ghostbur looked at him, eyes distant, and Dream tried not to see what was left of Wilbur in him. It was impossible. Dream and Wilbur had never been _friends,_ not really. Well. Once they had been, a long time ago. They’d had an agreement, of sorts. One that Dream would keep, even if part of him didn’t want to. 

“Ghostbur?” Dream says, and if his voice is raspy Ghostbur doesn’t point it out. “What is dying like? For the final time?” 

Ghostbur looks back at the stars, and Dream pretends he doesn’t see the lick of flame and blood glinting half-remembered across the ghost’s chest as he does. Pretends he doesn’t miss the stupid conversations Wilbur had pulled him into when he’d brought him the gunpowder, his eyes glinting and mad yet somehow familiar even as he approached his final days, as he told Dream nothing of his wish to end _all of it,_ including himself. 

“At first it hurts.” Ghostbur says, and his voice is soft, echoing faintly. “Then it’s just heavy. In the end the blood loss killed me, pretty sure. I felt the fire enchantments in the sword the whole time. I think I picked it specifically because I knew it would hurt.” 

Dream says nothing, and doesn’t move. His eyes close under his mask, out of sight of the ghost of what remained of someone who he had once known. 

“It felt like everything that had been weighing on me crumbled. It all crushed me underneath, then it was all gone. All I remember really feeling was that I was happy. Relieved. Warm hands on my face and tears on my cheeks. My eyes hurt, and then I was alone. I was there for a while, just fading away. I think I remember looking out over all of it. I remember Tommy was hurt, and that Techno was yelling. I don’t really remember why.” 

Ghostbur is quiet for a second, and when Dream opens his eyes to look he finds that the ghost is staring intently at his hands. They are shiny, and when Dream squints he sees a figment of blood across the ghost’s hands. Sees the red slowly spreading on the snow, staining the yellow sweater like a sunset. 

“I knew they would be okay.” He says finally, and Dream shuts his eyes tight. “I knew that Tommy would be safe. Tubbo would be alright. Techno would be mad, I knew that. I remember… there was a lot of pressure. The button was the answer. I liked the button because buttons can’t lie, Dream. And… I knew if I pressed it they would all be safer than if I didn’t.” 

Ghostbur looked at him, and Dream carefully did not move, did not breath because he knew his chest would stutter. _Because he was a **liar.**_

“I remember you, also. Talking to you before that day on one of the hills under the trees. The night was nice, and nothing bothered us.” Ghostbur admitted, and Dream’s lungs tighten in his chest. “I wasn’t scared I think. To die, I mean. I… it felt like I was making it better. Because I only hurt people that I love. I hurt Phil, because he tried to protect me. I hurt Techno because he thought I betrayed him. I hurt Tommy because I destroyed L’manberg, and he thought I was a traitor and a madman and that I only did it because I wanted all of it and got none of it. I hurt Tubbo when I told him he would be safe and I _lied_ , because he wasn’t.” 

There was a second. 

“And I hurt you.” 

Dream’s heart skipped, his lungs catching. “What?” He asked, bewildered and caught off guard. 

Ghostbur smiles at him, all sweet and soft and so fucking _puntable,_ and for a second Dream wants to leave, to escape, because he didn’t want to be psychoanalyzed by a fucking _ghost._

“I remember you made me a promise once, Dream.” Wilbur says, and - 

“One that you didn’t keep.” 

Ghostbur smiles, and Wilbur smiles, and suddenly everything feels so utterly _tiny,_ a pinprick of light and twisted memory and _no, what is happening, this isn’t right, this isn’t how this memory goes -_

Dream wakes up. 

The community house is gone. There’s only water, and Dream - 

Dream is **_angry_**. 


	18. We all have broken words (resounding in our heads) (Words:1212)

_“Betrayed you?”_

Techno’s lips thin, and for a moment he seems imposing standing tall like this, back straight and the armor sharp under his red cloak. The suit of armor glints with enchantments, and his sword is freshly sharpened. The potions bubbling away seem somehow more important. The tiredness that Phil exuded more important. 

Ghostbur didn’t understand. 

“Yeah, Ghostbur.” Techno says, and his voice is quiet and dark and _disappointed._ There’s an ache there, deeper than the skin. Ghostbur thinks about his family, how Tommy had referred to himself as _Techno’s little brother._ Then there’s something darker, a memory of a cold cave and whispered words and terror. 

The memory isn’t a good one, but he knows that it’s too close to refute the evidence in it. He remembers himself, living and with a beating heart, wondering if Tommy would betray him. The answer hadn’t always been _yes._ He recalls a conversation, shouted in eagerness, and the rejection that had hurt more than just his mind. 

He is too-still as he watches Techno prepare. There is something inside him that feels like it has cracked. _But it makes sense._

“Tommy would never betray L’manberg.” Ghostbur whispers, and Techno is all sharpness when he turns to the ghost of his dead brother, his teeth bared and his body tense. 

“I know, Ghostbur.” 

The ghost stares at him from where he’s flinched back, and Techno stills just as quickly as he realizes he’s spooked the ghost. Guilt brews, and the man turns away from the ghost just as quickly, hiding himself in a task so he doesn’t have to think about it. 

“I know.” He repeats, quieter, and turns back to the brewing stand. “But he’ll betray _me,_ Ghostbur. I’m not part of L’manberg. He already has!” 

Ghostbur hovers for a second, then sits on a chest slowly, watching Techno pace across the floor. Phil is outside, his fingers stained from redstone and netherwart. He had been replanting it, last Ghostbur saw, so there was nobody but him to comfort the man he’d always seen as a brother even when Techno hadn’t seen him back as one. 

Wilbur had gotten his avoidance of problems from somewhere. He was like his father that way, always directing his pain internally at himself rather than at others. Phil was sinking his head into other things so he didn’t have to mourn and grieve and weep. So he didn’t have the room in his own thoughts to think about how his family had fallen apart, and how a lot of it could have been averted if Phil had just come earlier, whitelisted or not. 

“He hasn’t.” Ghost says firmly after a short moment, with finality. Techno doesn’t say anything, but it doesn’t comfort him, so he continues. “He hears it too, I bet.” 

The other man stills, fingers tight around the bottle in his hand. His fingertips are stained with glowstone dust, and his braid is unravelling. 

“What do you mean, Ghostbur?” 

“Well, the song, of course.” Ghostbur smiles, but it’s too sharp, his eyes too bright. “The _symphony._ It isn’t finished. There’s four parts, and it isn’t done yet.” 

Techno looks at him, and there’s a strangeness to his expression. Wilbur meets his eyes, where he has put his head on his hand and his elbow on his knee. He smiles a little wider, as his brother looks at him. His sweater is a bit too long, brown instead of yellow, but he doesn’t notice. He never really does, when he relapses like this - but he does remember. Some part of him that Ghostbur isn’t aware of remembers _everything._

“How many parts are left?” His brother asks instead of asking _why ~~did~~ do you hear a song?_

Wilbur shrugs, blood dripping over the chest underneath him. Techno doesn’t mention it, as the ghost of the person who he used to know lifts his spare hand to count. 

“Well first there was the revolution.” He recalls. “Then the duel happened, and that one ended. Then there was the election and all the stuff that followed - that’s part two, where you come in! It ended with - with - “ He frowns, eyebrows furrowing. “Well it ended when Phil joined. Then there’s part three.” He smiles again. “Which is now!” 

Techno is silent, as he places fresh water bottles in the brewing stand. His hands are slow as he does it, and Wilbur watches him with a dark gaze, familiar and old and just as tired as it had been in that dark cave. 

Technoblade remembers not so long ago when he caught Ghostbur in one of his lapses like this. The words the ghost had said then had not left him since, rotting away with the rest of the thoughts that the warrior didn’t like to linger on. Right next to the thoughts of his failures at protecting Phil’s sons, his family. 

_“Techno, I thought it would stop. I thought it would be over, but it won’t stop **screaming,** Techno. I don’t know how to make it stop. I thought it would be over. I thought that - that - that dying would be enough. But it wasn’t!” _

Tears had dripped from the ghost’s face just as readily as blood. Techno hadn’t mentioned it to Phil, even though he knew part of him should. He’d caught his old friend looking at ancient books with tears in his eyes and blood on his hands too often to avoid mentioning it, but he’d never… Well. It was too late, now. 

The importance of the living outweighed the dead. Wilbur would understand, Ghostbur would understand. He still remembers the ghost’s downfallen expression when he’d told him he had to leave, had fixed his words hastily so that he hadn’t misunderstood him wanting Ghostbur to leave as him wanting him to never come back. The brightness that had returned to his face had reinvigorated Techno more than he’d ever admit. 

But now the worry was growing deeper. Phil had told him once that he had voices too, but he’d lived with them longer, tamed them far more than Techno had. His urge to kill was easily dissolved by building, by doing menial tasks and tending to other things. He had mentioned to Techno once, a long time ago, that he’d shed so much blood so long ago that his voices hadn’t been nearly as much of a bother. 

Phil was a good warrior, his wings just as much of a weapon as his sword. He’d taught Techno a lot of things, most of them useful and many of them comforting. He had never strayed as Techno’s friend, his ally, and Techno would never be able to repay that kind of kindness. 

But this… 

He remembers Wilbur talking to himself, in Pogtopia. The strange paranoia that had overcome the ever-so-slightly younger man who he’d taken to thinking of as a brother. He compares it to when he had been younger, his voices still fresh, and feels his face pale. 

“Wilbur?” He asks, voice hesitant. The ghost looks at him, dark eyes and blood dripping from the corner of his lips. “How long have you heard the song?” 

Wilbur smiles, and he does not answer. 

Techno thinks of Tommy, and the bottle he’d been holding in his hand cracks. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some voices are just louder than others  
> Some just run in the family
> 
> aka: what if philza's family got cursed and nobody realized it yet
> 
> there's a fan theory going around that l'manberg is just cursed and that's why all their presidents go insane and die and honestly yeah thats fair rip tubbo btw lmao kid president gets bullied into war #3, 2021 colorized


	19. I just wanted you all to stop playing (so why didn't you stop) (Words:1376)

The crater feels like it’s pressing down on him. The grief is thick, and his dead heart feels like it’s been ripped from his chest and pressed until it was beating out of tune. Blank eyes stare at the crater, register the distant _satisfaction,_ the hurt and the pain and the betrayal and where is friend where are they where is the house his sewer is gone his books his hopes his past all he had his book is _go n e wh a t happe n ed -_

Ghostbur looks at the crater with blank eyes. There’s a lot of blue in his hands. He clutches at it like a lifeline, and pretends that the grief isn’t eating him alive. Friend was gone. The wound in his chest _burns,_ fire and blood and regret. He does not cry because there are no tears left in him. 

He pretends everything is okay. He sings the anthem and pretends every word isn’t ripping through his throat, like it isn’t putting fish hooks in his tongue and _pulling_ until all he wants to do is scream. The pain isn’t physical, not really. It isn’t even pain. It’s more like… longing. 

Everyone is talking talking _talking_ but Ghostbur is struggling to listen. He follows people and smiles and pretends he’s fine, that he’s already forgetting. It doesn’t work. He doesn't forget. It lingers in his head, the sight of his country gone and decimated with only a hole left to show for it. His thoughts make his head empty, and it gets easier to not think about it when he isn’t near the crater, until eventually the memory is so fuzzy and barely-there that he feels like he isn’t collapsing to the ground with blood dripping down a diamond sword anymore. 

There’s nothing left. Tommy tells him that it’s over, like it was as simple as that. That this was the last time, the last fight, there was nothing worthwhile here anymore. The history is gone, the books destroyed. The deck is gone, Phil’s house left standing on unsteady supports. Lava lights the depths, water leaking from the canal into the crater. It isn’t pretty. 

L’manberg had been scarred, but if the crater Alivebur had made had been a scar then this was an open wound. Something irreparable, something that would never be recovered from. It would take so, so long to heal this wound - and even then the land would remember, just like his unmortal body remembered the sword that had pierced his chest. 

That wound had never healed either. L’manberg would not heal. L’manberg was gone. 

He wants to die. 

_What is my purpose. What am I, without L’manberg? What is the purpose of my existence? What is my unfinished business? Why aren’t I gone? Why why why why why why why why_

He wants to live. 

Ghostbur can feel his heart trying to beat in his chest, the song he’d never finished ringing in his head like a klaxon that won’t stop. _It isn’t over yet. It isn’t over yet. It isn’t over yet. It isn’t over yet._

There were still more parts, the symphony wasn’t _finished._ This was just the finale of the third act. So what was the last? What was after this? L’manberg was gone. L’mantree was ashes. So why couldn’t he let go? What anchored him, trapped him, kept him here? 

_Why can’t you let me go?_ He asks the world, and there is no response. 

Quackity doesn’t _really_ understand. Ghostbur needs to _end._ His purpose is gone, and now he is anchorless, empty. He wants to go to Phil but also doesn’t. He wants to visit Dream and follow him until his fingers are full of sand and gunpowder. The memory of TNT makes his fingers twitch, and he licks his lips slowly. 

They are bloody, blue and red dripping as his wound grows wet, stains his sweater red around his chest. He thinks about his conversation from earlier, with his father. Soon. Soon he would be gone, and Alivebur would be back, and he could finish it all. Right? Alivebur knew, he had to. Because Ghostbur didn’t. 

_The 10th of January._

He licked his lips again, slower. Bit his tongue and thought back to earlier, when Ranboo had handed him blue and Ghostbur had handed it back, had seen the emptiness in the half-enderman’s eyes as their gazes met. Ranboo had been full of cracks, struggling and lost, and Ghostbur wanted to consume him into a hug until all he could feel was warmth again. 

He thinks of Philza, the smile on his father’s face and how he’d drawn his bow back, watching them all. He thinks of Dream, as he lit the TNT with that unflinching smile on his mask. Thinks of Tubbo, too-quiet and uncertain in the face of a war he couldn’t win. Tommy, screaming. 

He thinks of Techno, betrayed and bitter. _Tommy betrayed him. Tubbo betrayed him. Had they betrayed Alivebur too? Is that why Alivebur died? A conversation in a dark ravine, the excitement that had gone too-quiet at Tommy’s words, how his heart had turned in his chest and his head went empty._

Ghostbur tilts his head slowly. His head feels too quiet, too clear. It scares him.. _I’m so tired of being betrayed._ _Lied to. Told that there was nothing left. What was left?_

**_Family._**

_They would all be together again, now. Right? Right? Right? Right? Right?_

Wilbur stares over the crater and thinks about how Tommy and Techno had had a rift between them. How Tommy sided with Tubbo, again and again and again. For what? For a crater of a country, just some land that they’d fought and died for? Was it worth dying for three times, to die for this? Just more war, a peaceless cycle of war, betrayal, peace, betrayal, war again? 

_My unfinished symphony was supposed to remain unfinished._

_That was the point._

_I died for this._

_I remember._

_I died so that it would stop, so that the song would never continue, forever be unwritten._

**_So why did you keep going?_**

“The symphony was never meant to be finished.” Wilbur whispers, and feels like he’s splitting apart. 

The first part of the song had been so beautiful, warm and brilliant, striking in it’s beat and proud in it’s stand. The revolution held good memories - being proud of Tommy, seeing his family happy and safe. The walls that had stood protectively, black and rigid against the insurmountable forces outside. His home, safety for his people and family. 

The second part had been painful. The elections… Pogtopia… The memories were all crumbled, like sand in his fingers. Then the button, and his death. That had been good. L’manberg had been scarred, and then gradually healed. A scar became a lake beneath sturdy wood, houses warm and comfortable and covered in decorations. Phil’s warm, sad gaze. A young president, a breath of fresh air for a country built in blood and sacrifice. 

Then this. Tommy not being allowed home, Tubbo betraying him. Techno living away, and being dragged back in shackles. Phil being trapped in his home, unable to leave. Then Tommy met Techno again, and things were happy. Safe. So where did it go wrong? Why? Why did they keep playing the song, why did they keep going, why? 

And now it was… 

_It’s all gone,_ he remembers Phil saying once. And now it really, really was. He… he would rebuild it. Repair the damage until the thoughts were gone and he didn’t hear the screaming anymore. He would fix this. Would fix it. It was his fault. He hadn’t been enough, had never _stopped it._

Why didn’t he stop it? He’d tried. He had. He’d failed. Now it was eating him inside, like something had burrowed into his chest and was eating away his organs and leaving his heart for last, letting it struggle and beat out of tune. His eyes watered and it _hurt._

Ghostbur just wanted it to end. 

Wilbur just wanted to live. 

They wanted to remember, and never remember. 

They wanted to step into the world again, their heart unbeating and their mind broken. 

They wanted the screaming to stop. 

_They would make it stop._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> crying in the club over friend ngl  
> phil bring your poor boy his sheep  
> also adopting a kid w/o telling your other kids is not very pog dadza please introduce ur new half enderman son to the rest smh


	20. I got resurrected so now im going to punch god in the face (eventually) (words:1344)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> so resurrection arc huh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at the end of this chapter there's a huge note from me talking about possible lore ideas/directions so you can read that if you want

“This is going to hurt!” Ghostbur had chirped, and he wasn’t wrong. For a second everything _stops,_ and all he feels… 

Ghostbur is incapable of feeling pain, but this? This is pain. Every false-nerve of his body stumbles, and in his chest his heart shudders. Blood and blue pour thick and viscous from the wound, and he smiles as it coats his tongue and drips from his eyes. There’s pain, sharp and focused and _real._

It’s the first thing Ghostbur’s felt other than the dull sensation of touch and pressure, and it’s wonderful. His body, underneath where he floats, twitches. He feels his heart beat in his chest, feels his unmortal body cinch tight around the sword, an instinctive response of _hurt._

For a second he feels _alive._ It’s so, so beautiful. It hurts so much, sharper than anything. He can feel the wind, feels the empty cold of the crater beneath. Feels the stone against his fingertips, feels the impact of an explosion that happened a long time ago. Feathers against his skin, warm skin against his face as he tucked his head onto his father’s shoulder. 

He loves every fucking second of it. He breathes in, feels the air flood his false-lungs, feels them fill with blood. He smiles. 

Then the pain reaches his head. He flinches, twitching in place as he grabs the blade of the sword. His eyes are unseeing, blank and empty. It feels like something has cracked open his skull and his ribcage to reach his core, was staring into his soul and _judging._ Then it was pouring into him, as vibrant as the sun and as deep as the core of a planet, cold and hot and _endless._

A barrier in his head cracks, and he breathes in sharply just as his body beneath him does, the sound whistled through rotten lungs. 

He remembers. In return, what he had been before he’d become what he was now remembers _him._

_I want to die **. I want to live.**_

_We can’t be both. **We could be.**_

_How? **Both of us.**_

_It won’t work. **It might.**_

_How do you know? **I don’t.**_

_But you’re me. **And I’m you. Were you me before?**_

_… no. **So why can’t we try and be both?**_

_I won’t remember. **That’s okay. We can both remember for us.**_

_What if they don’t understand? **They will eventually.**_

_But if they don't? **,,,They will. I’m sure of it.**_

_What if I die when we do this? **I will die too. We will be together, and we will remember all of it..**_

_Remembering hurts. **That’s okay. I’m used to hurting.**_

_Will you miss me if I die? **Always. You were part of me. It’s already starting.**_

_That’s enough for me. **One day.**_

_Do you promise? **Always and forever.**_

_Then I’m okay with going. **What if we are both of us at the same time? What if we remember all of it?**_

_Would that be so bad? **It would hurt.**_

_We always hurt anyways. Would it be any different? **...no.**_

_Let’s do it, then. He said he would. **He’s betrayed us before. Don’t you remember Friend?**_

_Of course I do. But he’s our dad. **He killed us before.**_

_Because we wanted to die. **I suppose that’s true. What about Tommy?**_

_He betrayed us too. Didn’t he? **I think so. Tubbo did, too.**_

_Techno never did. Techno is a friend. **Ranboo never hurt us, either.**_

_Phil helped us die when we asked him. It hurt him. **Friend died because of him. We’re even.**_

_I suppose that’s true. **Are you ready?**_

_I never feared death. **Neither did I. We embraced it.**_

_You promised to remember me. **Of course I will remember you. You’re me.**_

_What if we go mad again like they all say? What if we hurt our family? **I’ll lock myself away in a place they’ll never find me.**_

_Phil would try to find us. **...I’ll ask him to lock us away so we can’t hurt them.**_

_I guess that’s the best we can hope for. **Yeah.**_

_Talking to myself isn’t something that a sane person would do, is it? **No, not really. But it’s okay. We were never really sane anyway.**_

_I’m scared to die. **That’s okay. It’s scary.**_

_I’ll remember all of it. **Maybe that’s a good thing.**_

Wilbur breathes into shattered lungs and his whole body hurts like a _bitch._

There’s a hand against his skin but all it does is hurt, useless nerves firing with confused signals. He hisses, and it retreats just as quickly. His body is shaking without his consent, long-rotted nerves trying to exist even as a mist rises from his skin. He feels half-alive, his heart still and unmoving inside his chest as he rolls over and lifts himself up onto his elbow and tries not to choke on his tongue. 

All of his organs feel like dead weight, unresponsive and broken. Blood coats his tongue and he coughs up most of it, stained blue and red and awful. His heart beats in his chest and his whole body seizes, nerves flooded with fresh blood sending his brain a wave of static that makes his whole fucking head stop working. Distantly, he’s aware of the fact that people are speaking in familiar voices. 

“ - bur? Wilbur?” _Stop shouting stop shouting stop shouting at me -_

“Shut up.” Wilbur hisses, words barely recognizable as he speaks with rotten vocal cords, and the voice goes silent, stunned. He pushes himself up and tries to ignore how all his muscles are backfiring, not wanting to listen. He’s too-stiff, too broken - his body had been preserved, but time still took its toll that ice and winter couldn’t refute. Warm hands catch him and he suppresses the instinctive urge to turn and _bite them,_ some instinctive part of him feral as any mad dog and another part of him shivering with pain inside his skull. 

_Phil,_ he recognizes distantly. Warm wings wrap around him and he’s crushed against a chest, and he goes still at the sound of a heart. A long-familiar thump in his ears, one that his own does not echo. He feels… _wrong._ Like everything in him is rotted, and he’s just a shell full of broken shards of glass and nobody but him has realized it yet. 

Wilbur goes limp, lets his father hold his weight. There’s a quick inhale but Phil just holds him tighter, lifts him up, and Wilbur doesn’t complain as he just. Exists. 

He can smell, and there’s ash that makes his whole head ache. He remembers the hissing, the smell of gunpowder and feathers, and buries his nose into Phil’s neck just to remind himself that his father is _alive._ There’s pink in the corner of his eye, and when he looks Techno is staring at him. 

Some part of him wants to stick his tongue out and say _look who has dad’s attention now,_ but Wilbur doesn’t do that. 

“Your hair’s got white streaks, mate.” Phil says, and his voice is so loud in the quiet even though he’s whispering. He’s being so gentle, like Wilbur is made of the thinnest pane of glass he’s ever seen. 

Wilbur swallowed around the blood in his mouth and grinned. “Doesn’t seem very important to me right now.” He said, his voice raspy and still not-quite-right. He could feel every part of his body being stitched back together, the ancient magic curled tightly around his heart as it carved itself into his bones. 

It was in his marrow, in his lungs, in his voice and his head. His skull felt like it was split open, something wrong but _so fucking right._ All of his nerves were humming, each like a string and his body a puppet. He swallowed and felt each one pulling, and grinned into Phil’s shoulder as he tightened his fingers against his father’s back. 

“I can’t feel my legs.” Wilbur admits finally, and Phil laughs into his shoulder. Wilbur grins, and pretends he doesn’t feel the ache of his unbeating heart. 

He remembers too much to be okay. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> before i talk about stuff: this author note will be super long because it has lore/writing ideas, and also a credit for a design. recently a person did a really good resurrected wilbur design (someone made a skin for it also but the person who made the design is @itsnotdessa they art good it was pog and inspired me to write this chapter)
> 
> anyway  
> how we feeling about the resurrection arc folks
> 
> personally i am hype to watch wilbur beat dream to death with a stick but also im hoping wilburs resurrected character is a combination of all of his character development arcs, not just the villain wilbur of the manburg/pogtopia war lol (though it would be VERY interesting if it was a mix of villainbur and ghostbur, revolutionary wilbur is also pretty interesting)
> 
> also, was talking with a friend the other day and realized that the egg absorbed OBSIDIAN so it can probably just dig thru the wall and get out thru the crater lmao rip the world. im genuinely curious if everyones gonna get together to kill the ender dragon to "end the season" actually, like to escape the egg/get dragon's breathe to burn the egg away or something? like they all count down and jump thru the portal back to the overworld but oops its actually just the new 1.17 server and we get a fresh start pog???
> 
> dream give philza curse of vanishing elytra until he canon dies. winged philza supremacy lives on in the me. also the irony of giving him wings when its the CAVE UPDATE. listen it'd be so funny please i know i tweeted this earlier but it would be so hilarious -
> 
> also had an interesting thought: wilbur is a really big wildcard. if he gets resurrected by different people, what happens to him? if phil does it first, does he remember everything and become anarchy bros w/ techno again? if dream does it first, will wilbur even be the same person or just a villain? if tommy does it, what happens if he remembers nothing? wilbur (the person not the character) has so many options with his character here because he has remained a pretty consistent fan favorite (mostly for villain wilbur (madbur pog) and ghostbur (we would kill a man for soft sweater ghost)) so it's genuinely got me doing the big thonk about how his character will develop. 
> 
> maybe he'll have multiple personalities. maybe he'll be all of what he was, a revolutionary and a madman and a ghosty lad. maybe he'll be half dead and pogging about it. maybe he'll be immortal bc calling on ancient magic nobody knows how to use is a terrible idea. maybe he'll just be a monster (casual reminder that phil said canonically that resurrection is "taxing for both the body and the mind") maybe he'll get resurrected with op and be like :peace-sign: and go spectator for all we know its not like we have any idea whats happening
> 
> oh btw ranboo got adopted and he doesnt even know it yet the fandom is wilding, what a dadza move, absolutely unexpected (we expected it lets be real)


	21. Still wind (words: 1087)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> technically this is post-revival ghostbur but i figured he's dead inside anyway so it counts aHAHA -
> 
> i wrote this to post for his revival day on the 10th but then that uh. well. anyway enjoy this content, i've started writing things for not-dead wilbur that i may eventually post haven't decided.

“Dream.” 

The man in question goes still as the grave almost instantly. The voice is familiar, even through the raspiness. He turns slowly, but does not look directly at where the voice came from as he steels himself. Dream has thought about how this conversation might go far too many times, too many to count. 

“We have a lot to talk about.” Wilbur Soot says, his eyes and hair dull. His face has more color, and he is dressed in the same yellow sweater. The same trench coat he wore in Pogtopia is on top of it, and he has a scarf and a beanie on. Even still, he manages to look cold and tired. Dream’s eyes tell him that Wilbur doesn’t _look right,_ and he knows that part of him still misses Wilbur who had sung and told stories and used his little brother to send Dream messages, not… whatever was in front of him. 

Wilbur should have brown hair and brown eyes and a sneaky smile. A song on his tongue and a grand speech on his mind. He had always walked with a pep in his step, or like an animal prowling. Wilbur now was… 

Stiff. Like he hadn’t gotten used to a body yet. He took slightly too long to blink, and while he walked there was no life to it. He looked like a piece of the world had been desaturated, and he was that piece. 

“Do we?” Dream asks, turning to what had once been his friend, his ally, now a wraith resurrected from the dead. Wilbur feels vaguely wrong, the magic that let him live still sticky on his skin. It’s black and awful, ancient and unstable and something that should never have been touched. Even from this distance, Dream can feel the headache brewing from the magic feedback. 

Wilbur isn’t _natural._ He isn’t a zombie, or a skeleton, or some other creature. But he isn’t human either. His movements are too stiff, and his chest moves so shallowly in such a slow pace that if you weren’t paying attention he wouldn’t appear to be breathing at all. 

He’d heard of the resurrection, of course. How couldn’t he have? But this… 

“Of course we do, Dream.” Wilbur smiles briefly. It only makes Dream more aware of the fact that Wilbur’s eyes don’t shine with it - there’s an emptiness there, the brown dulled to near-gray. There’s no _passion._ It’s like someone took what Wilbur had been and drained him of everything exciting until all that was left was a shell of a person. 

“What is it we have to talk about, then?” 

He hopes that Wilbur can’t tell how uneasy he is. Wilbur had never been the best fighter, not someone on Dream or Techno’s level. He’d been better with a bow than anything, a sure shot whether it was from a high tower or from across a hill. But something in Dream did not _like_ what Wilbur was, now. 

“I have a lot of memories, Dream.” Wilbur says, and Dream tenses further as he walks towards him. “I remember you, you know. We talked so much. I remember a lot of things.” 

Wilbur smiles again and offers his hand, the expression staying this time. Dream recalls Ghostbur, offering blue with a smile and empty eyes, and takes it instinctively. 

Wilbur’s hands are cold, just below room temperature. It’s eerily similar to Ghostbur. Dream tilts his head, an ingrained response to show that he’s listening. Part of him is anxious at how quickly he’d responded to the offer of a hand to hold. _Getting weak, craving contact like that._

But Wilbur’s never really betrayed him. If anything, he wielded honesty like it was a weapon. A stick to beat someone to death with. If he wanted, he could rip apart Dream with just his words, and yet he hadn’t. 

“Do you want to sit somewhere?” Wilbur asks, voice so quiet that Dream can barely hear him. Dream blinks, shaken from his thoughts. 

“Sure.” He says, and lets Wilbur lead him away to a small hill. They sit in the grass under a tree, and after a second Dream follows Wilbur’s gaze to the crater that used to be a country. 

“Dream,” Wilbur says, breathing in deeply as though reminded by the way his lungs spasmed in his chest, “Do you remember when L’manberg got independence, and my little brother gave his second life and his most prized possessions to you?” 

Dream stills, Wilbur’s grip like a vice on his hand. “I do.” 

Wilbur stares unblinkingly towards the L’manhole. “Do you remember how, after I blew up L’manberg, you were at peace with all of us?” 

“I do.” 

“George’s house burned.” He says, and turns his head to meet Dream’s mask’s eyes. Despite the barrier, Dream feels his heart still in his chest for the briefest of moments. 

“It did. Tommy set it on fire.” 

Wilbur considers him, and for a second his eyes are warm. Like he’s looking at an old friend and not someone who’s tried to kill him multiple times. Manipulated him and his brothers. Destroyed his country. 

“Tell me, Dream.” Wilbur says, looking back towards L’manberg at the remaining lanterns floating dimly above the crater. There’s a fog rolling in with the incoming clouds of rain that makes them seem like they are floating over a sea instead of a crater so deep that it touches the core of the world. “If Tommy set fire to George’s house right now, would you still tell Tubbo to exile him?” 

Dream looks away. It requires… genuine thought. “I…” 

Wilbur smiles. “Dream, the fact that you have to think about it tells me enough.” 

They’re both quiet for a moment. Dream retracts his hands and Wilbur doesn’t say anything, though he watches him from the corner of his eyes. Dream doesn’t leave, and it says enough on it’s own. Wilbur smiles, tiny and weak, then looks back to the lanterns. His expression is wistful and grieving, a pain deeper than words can explain. 

Minutes pass and neither of them say anything. They don’t need to, really. Wilbur’s grief is infectious, and it only reminds Dream that he was sitting next to a dead man who was a ticking time bomb. Wilbur had always been passionate to an early violent degree. To see him so distant and empty was _wrong._

Like the calm before a never-ending storm. A wind that didn’t blow on a cold morning before the day of a war. 


End file.
